


Grab Bag II

by anexcessoffeels (headbuttingbears)



Series: The Grab Bag [2]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Abuse of Authority, Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Bonding, Character Kills In Self-Defense, Come Eating, Couch Sex, Daddy Kink, Dark, Derogatory Language, Drunkenness, Dry Humping, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Femdom, Fingerfucking, Fluff, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Major Character Injury, Multi, Non-Consensual Hand Jobs, Office Sex, Pegging, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rape, Sexual Coercion, Snowed In, Strap-Ons, Trapped In Elevator, Underage Prostitution, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:23:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3964264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headbuttingbears/pseuds/anexcessoffeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another modest collection of unfinished Barba-centric fic, now with 100% more suffering! Topics range from "what if Barba found a kitten?" to "what if he was shot??" to "what if he was a secret ex-pornstar???" to "what if I went full monster and wrote 10k about Barba being a prostitute instead of a prosecutor????"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gen, the one where Barba finds a kitten

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I will probably never finish any of these because I have a _poor_ work ethic. Expect sudden starts and stops throughout, and various quality levels.
> 
> HEED THE TAGS. They go in chronological order. Additional fic-specific warnings will be listed in the respective chapter notes. The last chapter is a doozy.
> 
> Blanket disclaimer that any inaccuracies - medical, legal, whathaveyou - are my fault alone.
> 
> As always - though with one exception - for Jenny.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY I KNOW HIS SECRETARY'S NAME. I'm sure you're all as relieved as I am.

When he finally managed to scoop it up from under Carmen's desk, Barba realized that the cat was very, very small. _Very_ small. It fit easily in his hand; he could crush it if he was that kind of bastard. But he wasn't, so he just sat back on his heels, crouching behind his secretary's desk, holding the cat.

The kitten.

It meowed up at him, high-pitched and surprisingly loud for such a tiny thing.

"Hello to you too," he replied. It was very warm against his palm.

 

Carmen was nowhere in sight and nobody he asked knew anything about the kitten's providence. Barba walked from office to office, poking his head in and asking if they'd lost anything, and when he showed them the kitten everyone responded with the same delight. Like he was a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat at a children's party. Normally serious faces brightened the instant they saw the kitten, which he had taken to carrying around in both hands so it would feel more secure and less scared. He assumed it was scared before; now it was quiet and he felt a very slight vibration from it he recognized as purring.

None of them had lost a kitten, of course – they were all working public stiffs like he was. But everytime he was about to leave, he always got the same parting comment: "You should keep it!"

His response to that changed the more he heard it. He started off snorting derisively because yeah, right, like he had time for a pet. But then the more people said it, the more it started to seem… Not completely ridiculous. It's like he was being incepted.

"You should keep her!" Emily, who he seldom saw, who had the office down the hall and around the corner, had pet the kitten between the ears with a single finger, and the kitten had rumbled happily, squinting up at her. It had sharp little claws, he discovered quickly; they emerged when it started kneading his hands as it purred. They're like needles but he didn't mind enough to put it down. What if it wandered off? Got stepped on? It belonged to _somebody._

"Why?" He hadn't bothered to ask before, but so many people had said it he's curious to hear the logic behind what he assumed was an impulse statement.

"Well…" Emily reached out to scratch the kitten under the chin, like she couldn't resist one last touch. "Pets are good stress relievers," she said before glancing at him, taking in his bemused expression. "And besides, you match. Clearly it's fate," she said quickly, turning back to her laptop after giving him a once-over he didn't know if he was supposed to notice.

Barba rolled his eyes, shifting the kitten back to one hand and returning to his office. Stress relief? He didn't need a pet for that, he didn't have a problem with stress. Hell, a pet would just _add_ to his stress. Having to take care of it, feed it, feeling bad about how much time he _wasn't_ spending with it… He didn't need anymore pressure in his life, his job provided enough.

Not to mention he couldn't keep the kitten just because it's the same shades as his outfit, even if its coloration _did_ make it look like it was wearing a light gray suit over a white shirt. That was just anthropomorphism on his part.

A very _little_ suit.

"I'm not keeping you," he said to the kitten, holding it up level to his face and looking it straight in the eye so it knew he was serious. It reached out one hand – _paw_ – and tried to touch the end of his nose, tiny claws extended dangerously. It had very blue eyes, he noticed. They were almost the same color as his necktie. Cornflower blue.

It would look adorable with a little tie. Or a _bowtie-_

The kitten meowed, reaching for him again, and he stroked a hand over its tiny, tiny head, feeling how soft it was.

"I'm _not_ keeping you," he said again, that time for his own benefit.

 

At lunch he laid down newspaper in one corner of the office, plopped the kitten in the middle of the classifieds, said, "Go anywhere else and you will regret it," and locked his door. A supply run had become sadly necessary.

Going by the reaction of everyone on his floor and Facebook feed – he'd actually been reduced to updating his page just on the off-chance anyone recognized the kitten, and all he'd gotten in response had been a torrent of likes and "AWWWW YOU SHOULD KEEP IT"s – the kitten might as well have popped out of the ether to lower his stress levels. He didn't know where the idea that he was one case away from a nervous breakdown was coming from, but then again he now had a kitten he didn't know the origin of either. Maybe everyone else knew something he didn't.

When he got back to the office with his bags of cat paraphenalia – three cans of food (he'd grabbed the mid-tier stuff at first, but then thought what if _he_ was a cat, and quickly replaced it), a plastic litter box, a small bag of cedar chips because the young woman at the counter had convinced him the traditional litter would give him, the kitten, and all of his neighbors cancer – Carmen was back at her desk like she hadn't been MIA for a few hours.

"You know your office is meowing?" she asked drolly, looking at the bags.

Bags in one hand, he pulled his keys out to unlock his door. "I take it that's not your cat?"

She shook her head. "Allergic."

"I found it under _your_ desk." He opened the door slowly, poked his head around to check that it wasn't waiting nearby to make a quick escape. There was no sign of it.

"Mystery cat," she said, getting up and following him in. "Cool. Can I see?"

"If you can find it," he said, setting the bags down and shrugging off his coat, scanning the room, the pristine newspaper pile. Nothing.

Carmen's sudden shriek caused Barba to bang his head on the underside of the conference table, and he glowered at her as he stood up, pressing a hand to the sure-to-be-massive goose egg.

"What the hell?"

She had her hands over her mouth, eyes wide. "Oh my gosh," she whispered, and beckoned him forward to his desk.

Fearing the worst, he joined her, looked where she pointed, and groaned.

"Isn't that just the cutest thing you've ever seen?" she said, pulling her phone from her pocket to snap a picture.

He grunted. The kitten was curled up in a tight little ball in the middle of his desk chair, sound asleep in the impression left by his ass. It was _sort_ of cute. The whistling sound of its breathing was worrisome. Did it have a deviated septum? Could that happen to cats? Was that why it was abandoned? He didn't know anything about pets.

Carmen had already taken a dozen pictures when he said, "Move it, I have work to do."

She gave him the _don't talk crazy_ look he got sometimes, usually after he'd slept in his office and greeted her after five cups of coffee in a row with a multi-page list of cases he wanted pulled for research purposes. " _You_ move her."

Bluff called, he frowned, crossing his arms before walking away, moving boxes around on the table and projecting an air of busyness. "I'm busy."

The flash of one last picture taken for the road. "So busy _over there_ where you don't need your chair, right?" He managed to keep up the act of having better things to do than coo over a stray until she asked, "Have you named her yet?"

The evidence box dropped out of his hands to thump onto the table with a faint tinkle. Hopefully there hadn't been anything fragile in there. "I'm _not_ keeping her!" he said.

Carmen just gave him that look again as she turned away, fingers already flying over her phone. Probably posting the pictures to Facebook and soliciting her 300 closest friends for name suggestions.

 

If only she hadn't tagged him, Barba thought with a hint of exasperation as he scrolled through his emails. The cat had finally given up his chair to investigate the space under the couch and hadn't emerged since.

It was insult to injury that most of the suggestions on Facebook were inane. She – _it_ – was white and grey, so every fourth idea was Smokey or Cloud. Some people riffed off her eye color and suggested Sky, Bluebell; someone suggested Melange which no, he wasn't naming his cat after space drugs, and then all of a sudden that picture of the cat with SPICE MUST FLOW was everywhere.

It wasn't enough that people had jumped on her post – "NAME MY BOSS' NEW CAT!!!" – but his closest colleagues had taken to emailing him as well. Were people really that bored? Was he the only attorney in Downtown Manhattan interested in getting any work done? What was it about adorable – no, she wasn't adorable, he couldn't think of her that way, he _wasn't keeping her_ – kitten pictures on the internet that made people lose their minds?

_Juris Prudence. You could call her Prudy for short._

Calhoun was too fond of law puns. He deleted her fourth email without replying, knowing that in ten minutes another one would pop up.

Sure enough: _Judy Cata. Get it? Judy Cata. Judicata. I'm giving you gold here._

Fifty-fifty odds that replying with a stern "cease and desist" would just encourage her to worse attempts at humor. What next, _catus belli_? Fuck, now he was doing it. That wasn't even a viable name! Although he _could_ call her Bell for short… No.

He shouldn't have been thinking about names anyway. That was for the shelter workers to deal with. And he was definitely going to open a new tab and start looking up no-kill shelters any second.

_What's the difference between a cat and a lawyer?_

_One's an arrogant creature that will ignore you contemptuously until it thinks it can get something out of you, and the other's a pet! OK that's not a name but it's still pretty good, right?_

_You can't ignore me forever, Barba._

He was seriously considering blocking Rita when needles stabbed into his shin, and he let out an alarmed yelp, rolling his chair back from the desk, away from the source of the pain. It followed him anyway, and he watched in horror as the kitten climbed up his leg like some sort of 80s monster. A Gremlin but quieter, tiny claws putting holes in his pant leg, and he wondered briefly if she was going to eat him until she reached the summit of his knee and scampered along his thigh to stand up in his lap, paws resting against his chest so she could meow into his face.

"That was completely unnecessary," he said as sternly as he could manage, wanting to be angry. There were going to be  _holes_ in his pants. Holes! And when he pet her,  _hair_ came off! How was it fair that kittens shed? He was going to be covered in cat hair! But she was so damn  _soft_ , and she kept making that ear-piercing meow at the same time she was trying to purr, headbutting his hand so fiercely that she tripped over her own feet and fell in his lap to wriggle, and Barba discovered immediately how impossible it was to be angry with something so adorable. _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stole that cat joke from the internet b t w.


	2. Gen, the one where Barba's shot on the courthouse steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gen, although it can also be read as smarm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ends on a rough cliffhanger.

Lara Casely was a waffler from the start.

"I'm not pressing charges, I love my husband" one day became "the bastard deserves to rot in prison" the next.

"I want to testify, everyone should know what he did" turned into "I can't do this to the father of my children."

"What he did was wrong. It was unforgiveable," she said on the stand, voice tremulous but clear during her initial testimony. And then under cross-examination, bright and early the next morning: "No, I would never divorce Daniel."

Back and forth, back and forth. It happened sometimes; Barba was too used to it to feel any kind of anger, just a simmering frustration vastly outweighed by pity. After the guilty verdict came back, he wasn't surprised by her reaction. Not in hindsight.

"Thank you for what you did for my family," Lara had said, standing in the hall after court was adjourned, arms crossed like she was holding herself together but sounding determinedly grateful. Days later, that gratefulness had shifted to anger.

"This is your fault!" she screeched, turning heads as she glared up at him from the bottom of the steps when he made his way down towards the street with Benson and Amaro. "You took him from me!"

"Mrs. Casely," Barba said, stepping forward with his hand up, reaching out to her, meaning to reassure her the way he had successfully every time previously.

"You _took_ him," she spit out, mascara running, raising her fist. "You turned my kids into _orphans_ , fucking _orphans_! They have no father because of you!"

"Gun!" A hand grabbed his shoulder, jerked him back at the same time he noticed the sunlight glinting off the gun in Lara's shaking hand.

No wonder she hadn't attended the sentencing hearing.

_pop. poppop._

Honestly, he wasn't surprised in the least. Back and forth, back and forth. He wanted to tell Liv this, but what came out instead was something completely different. "Holy shit," he said, gasping and disoriented, blinking hard. Up then down, sprawled uncomfortably, and he couldn't get his feet under him, couldn't get _up_. Liv wasn't any help either, too busy pulling her jacket off to bundle it against his chest, and he let out an embarrassing whimper at the pain when she applied pressure, tried to twist away from her on the cold concrete steps leading up to the courthouse.

"Stay still," Liv said firmly, her face close to his so he could hear her over the noise, the ruckus by the street, the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.

"She fucking shot me, didn't she?" Barba asked, a hard shiver rippling through him, dropping a stutter in halfway that distorted his words. "Jesus," he gasped as Liv's hands shifted and there was a fresh snap of hurt that made him squirm, clothes sticking to his shoulder and arm disturbingly.

"Just winged you," Liv said, bending over him, pressing her ear to his chest. "Might not be wearing suspenders for a little bit, that's all." Her hair sweeping against his face was a poor distraction from Lara Casely's nonstop tornado siren-like screaming, blasting up somewhere past his feet. She didn't sound remotely sorry yet, but he figured that would change soon enough. Give her a day and she'd be up to her eyeballs in regret. For all the good it would do him.

"This is such bullshit," he panted, struggling to get his breathing under control and failing as a steady warmth pooled beneath his shoulder. If she'd 'just winged'himthen why couldn't he sit up?

Liv sat back up, one hand planted hard on her jacket and the other loosening his necktie, feeling his throat. "Yeah, I know how much you like belts," she joked, that practiced tone of reassurance turned on him for a change before it crumbled away as she shouted for Amaro, for an ambulance, and he looked past her blurry shape to gaze up at the bright blue of the spring sky. She sounded so sure that he couldn't help believing her, but he couldn't stand how she stared at him, not when he could feel tears tracing hot tracks down the sides of his face.

God, he hated crying in front of other people. Maybe if he closed his eyes he'd stop?

"Barba!"

"What? What? Stop yelling," he said, quieter than he'd meant to be but Liv wasn't listening to him. Wasn't even looking at him now, sitting straight up, waving her hand and shouting something he couldn't be bothered paying attention to. There were other things to focus on. Like how chilly he was, the courthouse steps sucking all the warmth out of his body, icy under his palms. How there were more people hovering over him, strangers and familiar faces alike, people talking and gesturing and he loved attention, he really did, but not this kind. Childishly, he closed his eyes again, thinking if he couldn't see them they couldn't see him. He was in no state to be stared at.

"Rafael? Rafael, stay with me," Liv said, patting his cheek. Not for the first time, it felt like, and it made him moan pathetically because he knew she meant well but goddamn did he hurt.

"Please stop that," he wanted to say, but she patted him again, softer, her fingertips sticky and lingering. She was smiling, but it was desperate, unsteady, so no matter how much he wanted to he didn't answer her with, "Stop touching me, leave me alone, go away, go _away_." He would be mean to everyone else in the world before he'd be mean to Liv on purpose, especially now when she looked so upset.

She leaned in closer, hand moving away from his cheek, pressing back on her jacket like before; was she to blame for the full-body throbbing numbness? For the agony so intense it almost felt like it wasn't there at all? He had an eternity to decide whether or not to resent her before a pair of paramedics suddenly popped into view and then-

"Liv," he croaked out, forgiving her instantly, suddenly afraid the interlopers would force her away. At least he could still feel it when she grabbed his hand, even if he couldn't tell who was clinging to whom while the paramedics got to work humiliating him further by removing her jacket and shifting his own, their laughably small scissors snipping through his shirt, and he'd liked that shirt. Did they still sell it in those colors? Maybe he could buy a replacement later if he didn't-

If he didn't-

"Olivia?" he called, sweat or something else causing his hand to slip from her grip, and he grasped for her blindly. At least the crowd had disappeared from view. He didn't know what was responsible, Amaro shouting at people or the darkness creeping in around the edges of his vision.

"I'm here," she said from that same darkness. "I'm not going anywhere, it'll be okay."

He couldn't see her; there was a paramedic in the way, that was the problem, but when he tried to sit up, see her face, all he got for his trouble was a headrush and faster chatter between the medics as they worked.

"Where do you think _you're_ going?" he heard Liv ask, almost chiding. "The press can wait, Counselor."

"Ha ha," he whispered, eyes sliding shut this time against his will. God, he was cold. And it was definitely Liv doing the clinging; he felt it when she gripped his hand, covered it with her tackier hand, fingers crushing his. "Police brutality," he said, but there was so much yelling again he wasn't sure she heard him, and it was a bad joke besides, not worth-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NO HE WASN'T GOING TO DIE WHO DO YOU THINK I AM


	3. Barollins, the one with the fake dating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba/Rollins.

Jeffrey Milbury was persistent, she'd give him that. Hadn't changed in the least since high school. Neither had his linebacker physique, nor the glint in his eye Kim wouldn't have been able to resist but Rollins had always found offputting. Doubly so since that afternoon when he'd first spotted her, ignored her outstretched hand to hug her soundly, setting her skin to wanting to crawl clean off her body. Things had only gotten worse from there, and it was still just day one. Two more days to go, and here he was with two glasses, one undoubtedly for her.

"Drink?" He held it out to her, dangling between his thumb and forefinger, and he could've poured it in front of her straight from the bottle and Rollins still wouldn't have accepted it as untampered with. What was the saying about leopards and spots?

"Thanks but…" She glanced around, hoping there might be someone else around but of course there wasn't because she'd fled the reception – and Jeff – for the empty patio, claiming to need fresh air. Laughable since the oppressive humidity, trapped by the surrounding hotel walls, had left the air nigh unbreathable. "I'm seven months sober last week," she finished lamely, trying to remember if Jeff had seen her drink anything other than ice water or sweet tea.

"Wow, congratulations." Jeff's smile only grew, and he waggled the glass at her slowly, liquor gleaming in the evening light. "Sounds like something worth celebrating, don't you think?"

Rollins couldn't stop herself from scoffing in disgust, arms crossed defensively, but if she hadn't rolled her eyes and looked away she never would've spotted Barba slipping out a door clear across the patio. Even in the strange half light she'd recognize him, how he shut the glass door carefully behind him and darted a furtive look side to side before pulling something from his jacket pocket – phone? – and Rollins was pushing Jeff back with a hand to his chest before she had time to think things through.

And when precisely had Jeff gotten near enough to touch anyway? She had to pay closer attention, she couldn't let him get so- "Excuse me," she said with a polite smile, manuerving deftly around him when he barely budged, and she wove her way between chairs and tables towards Barba, fighting not to look like she was fleeing when she absolutely was, still feeling Jeff's eyes on her back, and she focused on the sight of Barba fighting with his lighter – lighter? Reason enough to put a bit of a stomp in her walk, and she had her fingers crossed that he'd forgive her for what she was about to do.

Of course he'd finally gotten his cigarette lit and taken that first blissful inhale when she planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips, and apparently scared the living daylights out of him when he opened his eyes on the exhale and almost jumped to the moon.

"Jesus!" He actually had a hand pressed to his chest, the one holding the cigarette, and his eyes were wide and shining from what little light hit him where he stood in the shadow.

Rollins waved away the cloud of smoke. She hadn't thought she'd been that quiet, but he'd obviously had his mind on other things. "You told me you quit," she said, loud enough that it would carry to Jeff, hopefully back where she'd left him. She ignored the glowing cigarette to stare pointedly at Barba's face before rolling her eyes back towards Jeff, hoping he'd take the hint. "You _promised_ ," she said, prodding him hard in the chest before jerking her thumb in Jeff's direction.

"I…" He frowned at her, then glanced over her shoulder, but there wasn't a glimmer of comprehension to be seen. Without thinking, he flicked the end of the cigarette so a clump of ash dropped to the patio stone.

She sighed, turned away like she was too disappointed to look at him, using it as an excuse to check on Jeff's location, and her stomach clenched nervously when she saw he was gone. Gone where? Her gaze swept over the patio until she spotted him, going the circuitous route of hugging the wall to stroll towards them instead of weaving through the furniture as she had, and she turned back to Barba, giving him another pointed look.

"Rafael-" and wasn't that weird all by itself, calling him by his first name, but it certainly got his attention "-you promised me back in January, remember? We _both_ made resolutions after Atlanta-" and there, finally, something in what she said or hinted at tripped a switch in his head because his eyes widened again, this time in understanding, before he glanced at Jeff, who was now a hell of a lot closer.

"I know, I'm sorry," Barba said, dropping his cigarette and crushing it under his heel before he clasped her shoulder and gave her a gentle push to his right, subtly putting himself between her and Jeff, who by that point was almost on them. "Let me explain-"

They hadn't made it to the door before Jeff caught up to them, stopping Barba with a hand clamped tight on his shoulder, and if she hadn't thought Barba would be predisposed to dislike Jeff that would surely do the job. "Amanda, who's your friend?"

Barba shrugged him off easily, turning to face him and holding out his hand, and whatever expression he had made Jeff take a step back. "Rafael Barba," he said, clasping hands with Jeff. "And you are…?"

Rollins shifted to Barba's side as Jeff tucked his hands in his pockets. Glasses nowhere in sight – had he done both shots? She was surprised; she'd been sure he'd drugged at least one of them.

Jeff raised his eyebrows at him. "Jeff Milbury, an old friend of Amanda's."

Barba's smile had a bit of an edge to it as he hummed thoughtfully, staring hard at Jeff's face as if he were memorizing it. "She's never mentioned you."

"Really?" Jeff shot her a look that made her want to swallow nervously. "That's disappointing. We had some real memorable times together. Didn't we, Amanda?"

"We went to school together," she murmured into Barba's ear, watching Jeff watch them.

"Yeah, the two of us go way back," Jeff said with his own smile, but his was far more suggestive. "I knew Amanda when she was still a real wild child, running around with flowers in her hair and not much else on her-"

"Yeah, alright," Rollins interrupted, not needing any reminders about her misspent youth, and certainly not needing Barba to hear anything about it. She tugged at Barba's sleeve but he didn't move as Jeff belly-laughed at her expense.

Instead, Barba twitched his wrist to pull free from her grasp only to swiftly clasp her hand, fingers sliding easily between her own. She watched dumbfounded as he drew her hand up to kiss her knuckles, staring hard at Jeff the whole time. "She doesn't run around much anymore," Barba said.

She _did_ swallow at that, his warm breath soft on her fingers, but unexpected as it was she didn't fail to notice how Jeff's eyes narrowed in consideration, grin dimming only slightly.

"I believe you were about to chew me out?"

Now she was the one playing catch-up, tearing her gaze from Jeff, who'd finally backed up, to settle on Barba, who looked like he was seconds away from outright pointing at the door and the safety of the hotel. "Right. Yes."

When he dropped her hand it was to hold the door for her, ignoring Jeff entirely until she was back inside the bar with no chance to say good night, and Rollins had no idea what was said when they clasped hands again and Barba stepped in close. Whatever it was finally killed Jeff's grin, and Barba joined her shortly after with a warm smile.

"Sorry, I didn't-"

"Save it." Barba had his hand on her elbow and herded her through the bar at a rapid pace to the brightly-lit foyer, thankfully Jeff-free. The fast march didn't stop until they were in the elevator bay and she could step away from him when he hit the call button, smile vanishing.

"Can I just-"

"Are you alright?" he interrupted, looking her over with concern.

She tossed her hair. "Yes? Yes. I'm fine. I just wanted to apologize about-"

"I said save it." He waved a dismissive hand at her before hitting the button again, planting his hands on his hips as he turned and scoped out the bay, the visible foyer beyond, before turning back to her. "Do you feel safe going back to your room? Do you want me to-"

"You've done enough," Rollins said before he could get any further carried away. "More than enough. He's not- Look, he's just… Persistent."

Barba gave her a flat look, so much like something Cragen would level at her that she had the perverse urge to snicker but she resisted. "Persistent is not the word I would use for that man."

She leaned back against the wall between the elevator doors, hugging her arms and looking anywhere but at his face. "Don't worry, I can handle him."

Barba made a supremely rude noise.

"What? I-" she thought back over what had just happened and winced. "Okay, maybe I need a little help. But I can't ask you to be my human shield for the whole conference."

"Why not?" Barba had his hands bunched in his pockets, and when he jerked a hand free to stab a finger into the call button half a dozen times she saw the glint of metal in his fist – that lighter again.

"Because that's… Ridiculous," she said. Since when did Barba smoke? She'd known him for years and never seen him light up once the whole time, never caught a whiff of smoke or seen a speck of ash.

"No, ridiculous would be telling him you're my fiancée and that he needs to stay away from you because I'm the jealous type," Barba said, cheeks slightly pink as he stared up at the backlit floor numbers and fidgeted with his lighter, flicking the flint-wheel over and over so it rasped loudly. A cheap Bic, totally at odds with the rest of him, and she was paying attention to the wrong things because wait, what?

Rollins uncrossed her arms and stood up straight. "Please tell me you did not say that."

He leaned forward to hit the button again before turning away from her to look out at the foyer. "Where the fuck is the elevator?"

"Barba."

"Look, we both know- Oh, damnit," and he crowded her up against the wall, hands light on her waist, and Rollins could just make out the figure of Jeff casually strolling through the foyer, openly looking at them. Her hands settled high on Barba's back, touching his shoulders – broader than she'd realized – as she felt him whisper harshly into her ear, "We both know he's one of those assholes who only respects another man's 'claim'-" and bless his heart that she could hear the airquotes around that word when he said it "-on a woman and not whatever she says."

She hummed her agreement, smiling because Jeff was still lingering over by the concierge desk, flipping through some pamphlet and being not the least bit subtle in scoping them out. The man couldn't buy a clue.

"I told you he's persistent," she said, tucking her face close to Barba's and smelling his cologne, the faint smell of tobacco, while her hand slid down his back, suit jacket silky under her fingertips.

"It's only for two days." His fingers twitched, hands feeling huge on her waist.

There was a loud _ding_ to their left, and Barba shuffled back, holding out his hand, smile wry.

Rollins sighed and took it, let him pull her into the elevator. "Just remember: this was your idea."

 

They'd separated the moment the elevator doors had closed, each leaning against a wall like the car needed the added support.

"Which floor?" Barba had asked, and after Rollins had named hers that had been it for conversation.

The silence was as heavy here as the air had been out in the patio. Should she explain about Jeff? There wasn't anything to explain that Barba didn't already know even if Jeff had made it sound more intimate than it was. They'd gone to school together, partied _adjacent_ to each other, and that was it. She might have been younger and far stupider than she was now, but that hadn't stopped her from having the kind of bad feeling about Jeff Milbury that kept her away from him no matter how self-destructive she got. But a bad feeling didn't seem like enough to justify her reaction, her desperation to put a body between herself and Jeff, and then things had gotten out of hand and- She'd lost her mind.

She picked at a hangnail, glancing at Barba and about to say… What? He'd made it clear he didn't want to hear her apologies. He wasn't even looking at her. He'd had her pressed up against a wall a minute ago and now nothing, and wasn't _that_ weird all by itself? Not to mention the whole engaged thing, which had been _his_ idea.

"You know, normally people just pretend to be dating," she said awkwardly. "If you want to scare someone away."

He didn't turn, but she saw caught his reflection looking at her in the polished steel doors of the elevator. "I realize that."

She pulled too hard at the hangnail and tore it, winced and sucked at the bead of blood that appeared. "I don't even have a ring."

"You're a detective in Special Victims, would you really-" the _ding_ interrupted him, and he stepped out, let her lead the way down the hall to her room because apparently he was intent on walking her right to her door.

"True, but this is different," she said, swiping her keycard and pushing the door open, grateful she'd been too busy to settle in and turn the room into a clothes-strewn disaster the way she ordinarily would've. No need for Barba to see what a mess she was in _every_ way. "Kind of makes the whole 'engaged' thing less believable. Like our relationship is on the rocks."

"Oh, so you're not mad about my flagrant overstep?" He wandered through her room, tugging the knot of his necktie loose before pushing his hands back in his pockets. Was his room nicer? Attorneys tended to get better treatment than cops. It probably was.

She shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching him twitch the curtain aside to take in what little view there was. This part of the country was flat, hot, and boring as shit. Not a casino or showgirl in sight. "I feel too guilty pulling you into my shit to-"

"Rollins." He glared at her hard enough that she dropped her head, but she heard his weary sigh, and when he dragged the lone chair over from the desk to sit across from her his expression was a great deal less harsh. "You don't-"

She held her hands up to stop him. "I'm sorry, okay? Just let me say it. I got… Freaked out, and I panicked, and-" she dropped her hands to her lap, rubbed a circle on her knee through her pants with her forefinger. "Sorry."

"Apology accepted." She didn't want to say that was a huge relief, but it was, moreso when she finally looked at Barba and he nodded his head side to side before adding on: "If totally unnecessary." He gave her a sad smile, the sort she'd seen him give vics who were struggling to stay positive. "The guy's an obvious predator. I don't know what you expect from _me_ but you should know by now I'm not going to be angry you came to me for help."

Rollins didn't know what to say to that, not with their past history. When it came to her baggage, he'd only ever tried to help her – or at least minimize the damage. She felt guilty all over again just for expecting the worst from him.

His smile became a touch more crooked as he looked down at her hands, finally motionless. "Besides, if _anyone_ overreacted…"

Which was something they could both agree on, and she jumped on it whole-heartedly. "Engaged, Barba? Really?" She held up her hand, trying to forget how he'd kissed it a short time ago. "No ring!"

"It was my grandmother's and you were afraid of losing it so you left it at home," he said easily enough, leaning back in the chair and smirking at her, pleased with his impromptu but tidy fiction.

"We have separate rooms," she pointed out, curious to see what else he'd come up with.

"Secret relationship? Professionalism? You snore?"

" _I_ snore?"

"I know I don't." He shrugged, tugging his pantleg straight. His socks were the same shade of orange as his tie. "Pick one, but please tell me in advance."

She thought for a moment. "Secret relationship then. If he asks around it'll explain why nobody else knows."

"Is he likely to?" He pulled his lighter from his pocket, turning it end over end on the padded arm of the chair. It was hypnotic, and she really wanted to ask about it, but it wasn't any of her business.

"He's a nosy son of a bitch, so… Yes." Providing nothing had changed since senior year, Jeff would stick to his old habit of circling like a vulture, waiting to swoop in at the first sign of vulnerability. He'd keep his distance so long as another man was on the scene, Barba hadn't been wrong about that. But… "He'll be watching."

The lighter stilled; Barba's expression sobered. "Are you sure you don't want to talk to hotel security?"

"And say what?" She got to her feet, wandered over to the window for her own turn at taking in the disappointing view. It was dark now, the evening finally dead, replaced by night and the dull orange glow of lights in the parking lot. "'This guy I know's too friendly and he gives me the creeping heebie-jeebies?' Please." She shook her head in firm denial. "It's just another two days. We'll have breakfast together, giggle a bit, and keep him off my back. Easy."

"If that's what you want to do." The drag of chair legs on low pile carpet as Barba stood up. "I'm up at six, by the way. If you really want to have breakfast together."

"Ugh, why?" She walked him back to the door, feeling silly about how aware she was of the distance between them. _This_ was their normal, not what had happened downstairs. Not the hand-holding, not his face in her hair, hands on her waist. So light, sudden but somehow not alarming.

"Networking," the first thing he'd said that had really surprised her. Since when was Barba the sort to gladhand and politick? "Plus there's a buffet at seven." That was more like it.

"Ah. I guess I'll see you there then." She opened the door for him, wanting to apologize again, or thank him, but she wouldn't. Enough was enough. Time to move on, and Barba was about to do just that when he stepped back into the room, swearing under his breath.

"Are you _sure_ you don't want to go to security?"

She leaned around him to glance down the hall, spotting Jeff immediately at the far end, too busy looking at room numbers to see her, and she swore in turn and bit her thumb. "Persistent."

"Stalking," Barba corrected, glowering. "To hell with this, I'm getting rid of him." He would've been halfway down the hall if Rollins hadn't grabbed his arm, hoping Jeff hadn't noticed how she dragged him back into her room.

"No, we stick to the plan." Before she could think twice she let him go to stick both hands in his hair, mussing it up quickly, feeling greasy product between her fingers. Pulled his tie a little looser, popped the first couple of buttons on his shirt, enough to reveal his white undershirt and leave his collar looking sloppy, but that still wasn't enough. He made no move to stop her when she undid the buttons of his jacket to jerk the front of his shirt free of his pants, grateful he was wearing a belt for a change, and there. Done?

His eyebrows had risen sky-high while she worked him over, and there was a flush to his cheeks that would only help sell the look. "Are you finished?" He sounded a bit strangled.

Apparently her familiarity affronted him, but- "This was _your_ idea," she reminded him again, looking him over, but something was still missing, and when she realized what she smiled ruefully at him. "Just-" she cupped his cheek, feeling a velvety drag of stubble against her palm before she leaned in. "Hold still."

Barba was like a statue when she kissed his cheek soundly, hoping for once that her lipstick wasn't as long-lasting as the ads all claimed. She leaned back, judging the light red smear, and did it again, closer to his mouth, hearing his soft inhalation. Tilted his head to the side, and he went easily so she could kiss his jaw and leave another mark. He smelled good enough to eat; the urge to bite him rose, sudden and startling, and she only narrowly resisted.

His hands uncurled from tight fists at his sides when she stepped back to reconsider her handiwork, and she nodded her approval at the sight of him biting his lip. "Good thinking." His bottom lip was appropriately full and pink now, like they really had been… Doing whatever they'd ostensibly been doing that resulted in him looking so uncharacteristically dissheveled. More than dissheveled. Wrecked, and kind of-

Rollins pushed at his shoulder before that thought could develop any further, and he stumbled out into the hall. Better at pretending than she'd expected, and neither of them paid Jeff – just a dozen doors away now – any attention at all. "See you at breakfast?" She pressed the length of her body against the doorjamb, all bedroom eyes, enjoying this despite herself.

Barba gave as good as he got. "Bright and early," he answered, voice rougher than she'd expected as he ran a hand through his messed up hair and only made it worse. The swagger in his walk as he made his way down the hallway was the universal strut of a man recently well-laid, but her stomach was in knots as he reached Jeff, unsure of what to expect. Total anti-climax: all that happened was a brief exchange of words as Barba pulled out his pack of cigarettes, and they both went to the elevator. She closed the door before she could see Jeff glance back.

 

Contrary to popular belief, Barba didn't hate a lot of people. Not that it wouldn't be incredibly easy for him – in his line of work he was constantly forced to deal with some of the most odious people to walk the earth, and not all of them wore handcuffs. But hating someone required a level of personal involvement that he often couldn't – or shouldn't – risk. Hating someone meant acting rashly, going on emotion instead of logic; he never flailed as much as he did when someone had pushed his buttons. Consider anytime Liv did just that – always ended up a shitshow, often of his own making. Doing his job well meant doing it with as little feeling as possible, though every case inevitably found a way to take a piece out of him.

By and large, however, he could say honestly that he didn't hate many people at all.

But he did hate Jeff Milbury.

They stood side by side outside the bar in the dark, both of them smoking Barba's Marlboro Reds, Milbury yammering on. Talking to the man upstairs had been a huge mistake because now Milbury thought they were _friends_.

"Looks like someone had a good night," Milbury had said, not even bothering to lie about what he was doing prowling around on Rollins's floor.

So Barba had smiled and smiled and thought about punching him out as he said, "Better than yours," and somehow Milbury had taken that as an invitation to start complaining about his own prospects. Probably thinking he was being respectful keeping Rollins's name out of it, Milbury hadn't stopped to take a breath the whole time. Not while in the elevator, where Barba had tucked his shirt back into his pants; not when he'd followed Barba back to the foyer; not once they'd reached the patio and he'd bummed a smoke. Barba didn't hate him the more he talked – he could've been silent as a monk and it wouldn't have changed a thing.

Barba took a drag on his cigarette, tasted tar and little else, and decided that in this particular instance he was allowed to hate someone. It felt justified. More than justified. Milbury was a prick. But he didn't hate him for seeing women as disposable toys, or for thinking the law was a joke that protected people who didn't deserve it, or for being a birther – and who seriously went around admitting to being a _birther_ in public? Sadly none of Milbury's terrible opinions were new, not even for a cop; he'd met plenty of people who felt exactly the same way and he pitied them.

No, Barba hated him for how he'd made Rollins feel that evening, frightened and barely hiding it, but he kept some disgust in reserve for himself. For not immediately recognizing her anxiety for what it was, for needing her call-back to that godawful case from January to understand. There was something uniquely sickening about his being so slow on the uptake that Rollins had to reference her own past assault to get him up to speed.

He was never buying Reds again, he decided. This shit was too rough to finish.

Barba glared at Milbury, puffing away and oblivious, and hated him a little more. For leaving Rollins so desperate she'd been close to throwing herself on _anyone's_ mercy, willing to go along with any half-baked plan if it meant putting distance between them. Totally out of character for her to hide behind someone else; he knew full well how often she – sometimes stupidly – put herself front and center, took the hit when she didn't have to. Rollins thought she needed to explain, apologize, but Barba didn't need any of that. Not after seeing how easily she'd let herself be pushed to the side, or against the wall. Anything to avoid Milbury, and once again the self-disgust rose in him for how he'd enjoyed that last part to no small degree. Jumped on the opportunity to touch her, feel her silky blonde hair against his face, hold her hand the way he'd wanted to for so long, knowing the whole time she'd ordinarily have never allowed it.

Really, Barba hated Milbury for making him as bad as he was, just sneakier about it. Because his buttons had been fucking _pounded_ , and he'd lost all sense of perspective, pushed Rollins out of the way and done the first thing that came to mind.

"Look, I don't have Amanda's southern manners," he'd led with, stepped in close to whisper so there'd be no chance of Rollins overhearing. "So when I tell you to stay the fuck away from my fiancée, don't take it personally. I'm like this with everyone. I'm the jealous type." His smile had only grown as Milbury's had shrank, and he wasn't sure who he hated more at that moment, Milbury or himself.

For fuck's sake, the man had even ruined smoking for him. Barba only did it at out-of-town conferences, his one self-destructive indulgence, and now here was Milbury, clearly enjoying his coffin nail, and Barba _hated_ having anymore in common with him. Wishing he could screw the stub of cigarette out in Milbury's eye, Barba instead settled for crushing it out in the stand before he walked away, ignoring Milbury's call of "G'night!"

Painfully aware of why people were giving him looks, he dragged his necktie off and stuffed it in his pocket, ignoring his reflection in the elevator doors and the lipstick still visible on his face. The pack of Reds and lighter went in the trash the moment he got back to his room, and he didn't bother to turn on the light or strip before he belly-flopped across the bed. The mattress was firmer than he liked, the comforter thin yet noisy, crackly when he shifted, the scent of detergent rising up from it foreign.

Rollins had the nicer room, he thought dully, pillowing his chin on his crossed arms. The view was shit but the room itself was… Better. Even though it was almost identical to his own. It smelled nicer, warmer, and maybe not hating every piece of shit he came in contact with had been a good idea after all. It left him with an excess he could use on himself now for wanting to shift against the bed at the memory of that smell.


	4. Barollins, the one with the vending machine food and the huddling for warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba/Rollins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So back in January, I was talking to Jenny about the massive storm that was supposed to hit the East coast and we got to talking about barollins (as we do) and this was the result. I actually wrote it DURING the storm (yes we both got tons of snow it was awful this winter was the worst) and then quit the second the storm was over. Because of course.

When Benson came charging in triumphant, waving a folder of papers someone had finally dug out of evidence after three days of solid searching, all Rollins heard was "someone has to get this over to Barba." She looked out at the snow that had been falling for the last couple of hours, looked around the bullpen – everyone was tired, everyone was thinking about getting home to their families. Everyone had been working a lot harder than she had the past two weeks.

Benson said other things like "key piece of evidence" and "filing deadline" and the word important a lot in that very specific way only she could say it. Getting your reports in on time was important; getting this collection of papers, with its dust and its gruesome details and its all-important confession, over to the DA's office was **_important_**.

"I'll do it," Rollins said, already wrapping her scarf around her neck. Not in the fancy way when she wanted to look stylish, but in the no-nonsense self-preservation way that results in two warm loops and the sense that that's not going to be enough. "I'll go."

Benson hesitated a moment – she'd been doing that a lot since Rollins had come back from leave, but she tried not to take it personally since she'd done the same to Nick. "You sure? I can get-"

Rollins didn't wait to hear who the alternative would be and pulled on her coat. Probably Carisi, the poor bastard, who looked half frozen after spending the day in Harlem. "No, it's fine. Quick trip downtown, no big deal." And then, when Benson still didn't pass the papers over to her outstretched hands, she added cheerfully, "I like the snow."

A chorus of disgusted groans rose up around her, and she smiled sheepishly at Fin, who was shaking his head.

"Crazy," he muttered, but he grinned back at her as he rubbed his mittened hands. Poor circulation. "You're _crazy_."

"Hey, it's still a novelty to me!" she said, that old saw she broke out every year. _No snow where I grew up_ had, at some point, become a secret truth that really, she just liked the snow.

"Well, there's supposed to be a lot of it tonight, so maybe you'll finally get your fill." Benson gave her the folder. "Be careful out there. I'll call and tell him to expect you."

Rollins waved back at her, folder in hand, already on her way out. If she was going to go she might as well go then.

 

She'd lived through snowstorms in New York before, but every time may as well have been the first because it was impossible to remember _exactly_ what it was like. How the snow could fall at an overwhelming rate, cover everything up in a matter of hours. How the city went quiet, traffic diminished, everyone still rushing around but muffled, less talkative, less honking and yelling.

People only remembered the accumulation in vague numbers, bickering over it like that's what mattered. _It was a foot; no, it was more than a foot; it was less; tell that to my back, I had to shovel three times; it was up to the fire escape I swear!_ And Rollins was just as guilty of thinking like that, she knew it. So she resolved to look a little harder, remember better.

When she got off the subway, careful on the slick stairs, she found the Civic Center practically deserted. The courthouses stood lonely and austere, the wind-tossed fluffy flakes doing nothing to soften their appearances. A couple of people rushed through Foley Square, huddled into their coats, clutching briefcases and speed-walking along in that careful way people did when they were wearing the absolute worst shoes for the weather. Rollins was happy to see the food cart locked up, thinking how miserable it would've been to sit out here in the snow, waiting and desperate for business. Although a cup of coffee would've been nice.

Barba was waiting for her in the foyer, just past security, and he flapped his hands impatiently at her when the security guard took a second too long checking her badge, a trickle of people moving past them, fleeing the building.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," he said, still not happy even after she passed over the folder. "Most of the judges are already gone," he said as he scanned first one page, then the next, flipping through them faster than she imagined a person could possibly read. "This looks- Okay, wait here," and he was gone, off like a shot down the hall, moving faster than she'd ever seen, including that time when he'd literally chased her in the street.

Rollins turned to the guard. "You here all night?"

He shrugged in that practiced way you developed when you spent most of your time standing around waiting for nothing. "Nah. Probably locking up early, fourish maybe. Heard it was supposed to start getting real heavy around then. It as bad out there as it looks?"

She hugged herself, twisting slightly back and forth. "It's picking up."

"Hm."

They lapsed into silence, watching the snow blowing just beyond the doors, lawyers filing out in ones and twos, some waving back at the guard. It was drafty at ground level, but then the whole building was drafty. Old, with insulation that had seen better days.

Her phone went off, loud in the silence that had dropped on them, startling her but not getting more than a disinterested eyebrow quirk from the guard.

"Don't bother coming back," Benson said over the strangely fuzzy line. "We're closing up shop for the night. Just go home when you can, alright?" There were a lot of muffled noises on her end, and Rollins could imagine her trying to pull her coat on with one hand.

"Nonessential personnel, right?" She knew how it worked.

"You got it," Benson said wryly. "Feels good to be unimportant for a change, doesn't it?"

"Sure," she said, looking around. The floor was wet in spots, damp tracked in despite the black mats that had been laid out in front of the doors.

"I assume since I don't have Barba on the other line yelling about… Punctuality or whatever, that you got over there in time?"

Rollins nodded, remembered she couldn’t see it. "Yep. He ran off – literally ran."

"That must have been a sight," Benson laughed, before sobering. "Make sure you get home, don't get sucked into whatever he's doing. I heard they were going to shut down some of the subway lines-"

"Don't worry," Rollins said, uncomfortable being mothered. "I'm leaving soon." They said their goodbyes, and Rollins slipped her phone in her coat pocket just as Barba came running back, out of breath and skidding across the wet floor. "What, did you run the whole way?"

"Had to," he gasped. "I need you to testify to something real quick."

"What?" She stared at him, then glanced towards the doors. The snow was falling so steadily the world had disappeared behind a curtain of solid white. "What, _now_?"

"Yes, yes, now, now, c'mon." He waved a hand at her, grabbing her elbow when she didn't move quick enough. "The only judge left is a stickler who wants the providence on record – which is good for us, really, or it would be if he wasn't also packing to get the hell out of here so we only have about five minutes because he won't just accept this _tomorrow_." She watched him jab the button for the elevator half a dozen times before he gave up and she resigned herself to taking the stairs.

She could've sworn she heard the security guard sniggering to himself.

"What floor?" Rollins pushed the door open, letting him lead the way.

"Third," Barba said, and kept up a steady stream of complaints the entire way, voice echoing in the stairwell, until they emerged and practically ran into Judge Lambert, waiting in front of the elevators. She hoped he hadn't heard anything Barba had said.

"Here! Here she is, your honor. Detective Rollins," Barba huffed, motioning to her like she was some sort of game show prize. "She's the one who brought the confession over."

Lambert looked extra large in his wool coat and furry hat, looming and brown all over like a grizzly bear, bag in one meaty paw, and he gave her a look not unlike what Yogi would give an empty picnic basket. " _You_ brought it over?"

"Yes, sir," she said, standing up a little straighter, feeling self-conscious and hot under all her layers. She wasn't dressed for running around. "If you want me to swear-"

"Whatever, good enough." Lambert sighed, shrugged his sleeve back to deliberately check his watch before glowering at Barba. "You exceed my wildest expectations yet again, Mr. Barba. I'll see you tomorrow, unless we're all buried alive." He entered the elevator car, tossing out, "Don't forget the statement. My desk, 9AM tomorrow." And with that the doors closed and the judge was gone.

Rollins, puzzled by the prospect of more work, turned to Barba.

Who stood staring intently at the floor indicators, watching as one after another they dimmed and lit up, until the light stopped on the first level of the parking garage, at which point Barba made a violent sort of strangling motion with his hands. "Fuck this guy!"

Rollins leaned back, surprised by his vehemence, watching as the pantomime continued. She glanced around to see if there was anyone else to witness this, but they were alone. "Uh, maybe don't… Pretend to be wringing a judge's neck. In public."

Barba made a frustrated sound before taking a deep breath, smoothing a hand over his hair. "Sorry. You're right, I- That was- Sorry." He looked sheepish but still stomped instead of walked back to the stairs, continuing further up instead of down like Rollins had hoped. "He's trying to sink my case," he said over his shoulder in explanation when Rollins couldn't help but follow after him, curious. "Still pissed about how I wrote to the Times and corrected his stupid op-ed where everyone could see."

Rollins thought about asking and decided not to. It sounded like an ego thing, and she didn't care. It always came down to ego with these people. "If he is, can't you… I don't know, go to McCoy? Get him recused? Conflict of interest?"

"Ha!" Barba shook his head, but he wasn't angry anymore when he smiled back at her. "If I had to change judges every time I got one who didn't like me I'd never get anything done. Besides, he's being tricky about it." He trudged on, hand dragging along the rail. "No, I'll just have to beat him at his own game. I'll need your help though."

Rollins looked over the side of the railing, down at the stairs uncurling below them, thinking about the long walk down, and then the walk after that, out in the snow and on the subway and eventually back home, where she could spend the rest of the night and probably the next day doing… Nothing. Same as she'd done all day. Might as well have taken an extra two days off, tacked them on to the end of her two weeks of leave.

 _Don't get sucked in_.

She'd had her fill of being useless. "What do you need from me?"

 

The snow was coming down steadily when Rollins looked out the window, the curtains in Barba's office shifting minutely in the draft. Concern about getting home was as vague as the outline of the buildings hidden beyond the veil of snow. The cup of coffee she held was warm; her feet were dry; it was quiet except for Barba's furious typing. She'd get home eventually, and she'd asked her neighbor to check in on Frannie. First day back to work; she didn't want Frannie worrying, all alone.

"How about now?" He turned the laptop so she could see the screen, and she leaned over, reading the newest set of paragraphs.

A lengthy silence followed as she read carefully, conscious only of the sounds of Barba's faint breathing and the office door rattling in the frame. The draft must have been getting stronger, or a window had been left cracked somewhere, letting in a breeze that pulled at the door, made her shiver and hold her mug closer, Barba's knee nudging her leg.

"Looks good," she pronounced, stepping back.

"Great, so glad you think so." He stood up, half leaning over the laptop as he hit print, too full of hurry to sit and wait. Across the room, the printer stirred to life, only for the lights to start flashing. Green and red, back and forth, and Barba dropped his head and groaned. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Rollins squinted at the screen. "'Out of ink.'"

He rolled his eyes, clicking around faster than she could be bothered to follow. "I'll be right back," he said, snatching up a set of keys off his desk before trying to get around her, catching her off guard. They danced back and forth until finally he grabbed her by the shoulders, held her in place as he moved around her, and was nearly out the door when he yelled back, "Don't drink all my coffee!"

She'd barely finished her first and only cup when he came barreling back in, brandishing four sheets of paper. "Sign… Here," he said, stabbing a finger at one of the lines and passing her a pen, and the ink wasn't dry when he snatched it all back, stapled them into pairs with a grim satisfaction, and bolted again.

"Wait, so is that it?" Rollins leaned out the door, watching him trot away down the hallway, keys jangling in his pocket. "Can I leave now or what?" The only answer she got was a vague gesture as he disappeared around a corner, and she retreated back into the office. Homework done; time to go home.

She had her scarf loose around her neck when her phone vibrated, and she checked it, concern spiking immediately. An emergency alert for the weather; when she pulled back one of the curtains it didn't look any worse than it had been ten minutes ago. But now she also didn't have a signal, not a single bar, and that was a little more worrisome.

It was what it was; she could at least get her coat on. Rollins was mostly ready to go when she heard the telltale jangling – Barba coming back down the hallway, and he stopped before her, grinning.

"All done?"

"All done," he said, looking smug, clapping his hands together. "Left one copy on his clerk's desk, the other went under his door – let's see him say he didn't get it."

Rollins started walking towards the elevators. "No copy for yourself?"

He patted his vest. "Photocopied it. Didn't want to run any risks. I'll walk you out. Least I can do since…" He looked at her, her coat and scarf, down at her boots. His grin shrank a bit, became a touch more humble. "You were a big help."

"I didn't really do anything," she said, thumbing the button for the elevator. "Played messenger, did a little proof-reading. Not exactly important work."

"Not to you, maybe. To this case, to… Well, to me. It was important." They stood side by side in the elevator, staring at the closed doors. Rollins was glad she couldn't see her reflection in the brushed steel; her cheeks felt hot.

"How was your time off?" Barba asked, hands in his pockets, thankfully changing the subject.

" _Boring_ ," she said, surprising them both with her fervor.

He ducked his head, hiding his smile as they stepped out, into the empty bay on the ground floor. "That's why I don't take time off."

Rollins pointed out at the snow, swirling around just outside. "You might get some tomorrow if it keeps up like this." She zipped up her coat, did up the buttons as she watched him watch the snow, his face wrinkled with dismay. They passed unbothered through security, the guard nowhere in sight. "They're saying it's supposed to be historic. More snow than the city's seen since the 1800's or something like that."

"God help us," he said, shivering dramatically before his hand went to the handle of the door. "Watch yourself out there."

"Mm." She considered him, the tired lines around his mouth, the wilted, unstarched look of him. But there was a proud glint to his eyes, happy at getting one over someone else, and she thought he'd be fine. "Don't stay any later. Go home."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, and pushed the door open.

Or he would have if it hadn't been locked.

Barba tried the door again, frowning when it didn't budge. Wordlessly, he tried the next one, mouth flattening into an unimpressed line as he was met with the same result. "Try those ones," he said, tipping his head to the two doors on Rollins's side.

Nothing. They rattled, and rattled again in the wind, but they didn't open. Nor did the rest of them, and the revolving doors were locked in place as well, a triangle of snow blown up against the glass by the wind.

"Huh," she said, scratching her forehead under her hat after they completed their futile circuit of the ground floor, checking each of the four entrances and having no luck.

"I don't have a key," Barba said, patting his pocket where they jangled against his thigh, examining one of the locks. "I don't have a key for these doors," he said, looking back at her, visibly alarmed. "Just some of the offices."

"I thought they were supposed to check the building first," Rollins said slowly, trying one of the doors again pointlessly. Nothing, of course. "Do a walkthrough or whatever."

He checked his watch. "It's not even five. Let's check downstairs. Parking."

They hurried back to the elevator bay, Rollins shaking her head. "It's going to be locked," she said, already knowing what they were in for. Nothing ever went easily.

"Don't be such a pessimist," he replied flatly.

The first level of the parking garage was cold and dim, the fluorescent lights doing very little to illuminate the cavernous space. Sound bounced eerily off the concrete walls as they headed for the entrance, and Rollins felt compelled to keep looking around. Paranoid, but she knew her stats. Just because it _looked_ empty…

Barba banged a fist against the rippled steel of the garage door. "This is ridiculous," he growled. "We can't seriously be locked in."

She could see snow creeping in under the door where it didn't quite meet the asphalt. "Is there- Do you have a signal?"

He snapped his fingers, pulled his phone from his back pocket. "No, but… We _are_ in a glorified basement," he said. "Maybe…"

"I checked earlier and didn't have one," Rollins said, hugging herself. She was bundled up and still cold; how was Barba not freezing?

As if on cue, he shivered violently, not just for show like before. "Let's get back upstairs, there's one other place we can check," he said, forgetting his phone in order to rub his hands for warmth and shove them in his armpits, taking the stairs two at a time.

The security office was locked as well, empty like the rest of the building, and Barba turned to her, at a loss. "Any ideas?"

She bit her lip, looking around. Without the usual crowds, the place seemed larger than usual, colder. "What about one of the landlines? Maybe we could-" There was a hum, and then suddenly nothing. An intense nothing, pressing in on them from all sides.

The wind howled, shaking the windowpanes, now the only sources of light, and the distant useless doors.

"Really?" Barba asked, looking up at the ceiling. " _Really?!_ "

All of a sudden it seemed far darker than it should have been considering it wasn't yet 6PM.

 

"You know, this is kind of…"

Barba, down on his knees in front of the vending machine, gave her such a dirty look that Rollins would've laughed in astonishment if she hadn't been too busy covertly admiring the view. "If you say this is _fun_ so help me God I will…" He trailed off when his fingers brushed the corner of a bag of pretzels, and he stared into the middle distance, concentrating. The bag twitched in the row. "I can't think of anything," he conceded, sounding not the least bit happy about it.

He wasn't the _least_ bit happy about anything. No power meant no working landlines since all the phones were fancy electronic Cisco deals. There was supposed to be a back-up generator but it was old like everything else important the city hadn't bothered to upgrade, and it hadn't kicked on. The temperature had dropped rapidly without the HVAC, the building proving to be even draftier than Rollins had initially suspected. They had a working laptop but no internet; charged phones but no signal. They could've triggered the alarm if it had occurred to them earlier, but now with no power…

Well, it looked like they weren't getting out any time soon.

Barba's sour temper had, perversely, only boosted Rollins's mood.

"Things could be worse," she pointed out, relentlessly cheerful as he passed her the bag of pretzels and reached back in for something else.

"Wow, really," he said, snagging an oversized oatmeal cookie. "Please, tell me how this could be worse. I'd _love_ to hear your argument."

She took the cookie and added it to the banker's box of snacks they'd pilfered. "We could be stuck in the parking garage. The roof could've caved in and killed us. You could be here with Carisi instead of me."

He barked a laugh at that, trying for another cookie, forcing his hand past the curl of metal holding the package in place. "Save me from wannabe lawyers."

"Or you could be here alone," Rollins pointed out, wincing when he bashed his knuckles against the Plexiglas front with an unhealthy sounding crack after he jerked the cookie free.

He shook his hand out after, when the cookie – peanut butter, not even another oatmeal – was safely in the box and he'd climbed back to his feet.

"Are you alright?" She held his coat out to him but he didn't take it, focused instead on his hand.

He flexed it slowly, grimacing. "Yeah, just…" He swallowed when, after tossing his coat over her arm, she took his hand in hers, examining the reddened knuckles.

"Looks fine," she said, turning it this way and that. "Probably won't fall off."

"Is that your professional opinion?"

She grinned. "I _do_ have first aid training, you know. First responder and- How are you so warm?" She clasped his hand between both of hers, finally noticing the heat of his smooth palm. "You haven't been wearing any gloves."

Barba had a perplexed expression on his face. "Left them upstairs," he said, matter-of-factly, holding her hands in a grip so light she hadn't noticed his fingers curl around her until they twitched.

Her two hands fit easily in his one, she noticed.

"Maybe you should put yours back on," he said, pulling away. If she hadn't known better she would have thought he did so reluctantly, but he reached for his coat readily enough. He was probably cold from kneeling on the floor in his shirt-sleeves. That must have been why his cheeks looked a little pink. Just the cold.

Rollins shivered, remembering how warm he'd felt.

 

Their feast might have been meager but what it lacked in quantity it made up for in variety. A selection of large soft cookies; mini pretzels, unfortunately low fat _and_ low sodium, but Barba ate them anyway without complaint; bags of Cheetos and Lays chips; four different kinds of gum that they weren't going to eat but Rollins had insisted on getting anyway. They'd cleaned out what remained in the bottom rows of three different machines, it didn't make sense to leave the gum.

The junk food was supplemented by bottled water and plastic baggies of healthy snack food from Barba's private stash; Rollins had teased him for watching his figure but still eaten half the dried mango anyway.

"When did you get these?" she asked, teeth chattering a little as she dug her fingernail under the lid of the metal tin of tea biscuits. It had gotten darker and colder without her noticing.

"Came with the room," he answered, carefully peeling another lychee. She wasn't sure how he managed it; in the near-dark it looked like his hands were shaking slightly, but that must have been the shadows playing tricks on her vision. "I don't know if they're any good. I've never had one."

The lid popped off with an airlock-like hiss, rocking Rollins back where she sat cross-legged on the rug. Their options had been limited; every office was as drafty as Barba's, there weren't any blankets or towels to be found, and the one space heater they'd located, tucked under a desk, was useless without power. By mutual agreement they'd appropriated a rug they'd found in another office.

"Denise won't mind," Barba had said, rolling it up. "She likes worthy causes."

It was ugly but far better than sitting on the wood floor.

Rollins tapped one of the biscuits against the side of the canister, yawning as she looked it over. In the dark it didn't _look_ old, and it passed the smell test; she popped it in her mouth, chewing carefully.

Less than a foot away, Barba yawned prodigiously, covering his mouth with one slow hand. "Thanks," he muttered.

She lifted the tin. "No, thank _you_ ," she said after swallowing. They weren't bad. Stale. "It must be after nine."

He shook his head, looking past her to the windows, where strange light still filtered in. Reflected from the snow, still falling and heavier than ever. They'd stood staring outside earlier, marveling at the vacancy of the surrounding area, transformed by the billowing snow, the unlit streetlights as good as dead trees by the side of the road. They hadn't seen a single plow or salt truck.

"Our tax dollars at work," he'd said then, very dryly.

"After ten," he said, checking his phone. An overcomplicated alarm clock at this point – still no signal. "Almost eleven."

"Time flies," she muttered, eating another biscuit before offering him one, shaking the tin so it rattled when he didn't respond. "You can't say this isn't kind of fun in a weird way."

Barba looked more tired than unamused, hand half in the tin, sleeve of his coat pushed up around his forearm. "Pretty sure there's something in the constitution saying I can."

"This doesn't make you think of slumber parties?" Feeling greedy, Rollins dropped the tin on the rug and leaned forward to grab one of the lychees out of the bag next to Barba's knee, startling him. "Staying up late, eating junk – how can you see to peel these damn things? – somewhere we're not supposed to be. It's like an adventure, like in that book where the kids sleep in the Met. Minus the part where we're locked in and freezing to death."

She still couldn't get the nubby skin off, cold fingers not cooperating, faltering when Barba's hand covered her own. He was sticky but warm. Far warmer than she felt, even if his hands _were_ shaking after all.

"I do it by touch," he said, repositioning her fingers by the stem, pressing down so she knew where to dig in her thumbnail to cut the skin, drag it off and pull out the stone to tuck into the plastic bag, more full of discarded peel than fruit. He sat back when she popped it into her mouth.

"It's good," she said after a moment. Sweet, juicy, but… "Too much work." She reached for one of the napkins he'd insisted on bringing over; now she knew why.

He shrugged. "Some people-" he yawned again, longer this time, and he blinked at her afterwards, looking younger somehow, the dark or maybe fatigue smoothing out his face.

"You completely forgot what you were going to say, didn't you?" She yawned again in turn, wondering if they'd get stuck passing it back and forth like they were playing catch.

"I've been up since 6AM," he said, and it came out somewhere between a grumble and a whine. "I would've slept in if I'd known I was going to sleep on the-" He paused again, and in the dark she could see his eyes glittering as he looked off to the side, where the couch was. "You can take the couch," he said decisively.

"Don't get all chivalrous now on me, Counselor," she said, shuddering when she heard the wind howl past, as if they needed the reminder of what was going on outside. She dug a hand into her pocket, fishing out a quarter. "Look, we'll flip for it."

"Don't I outrank you somehow?" He scowled at her, the effect ruined by how he too was hunched in his coat, sitting as close to her as he dared in an effort to stay warm. "It's _my_ couch, it's _my_ office, and I say-"

"Heads? Great." She flipped the coin, caught it neatly and slapped it on the back of her hand. Like everything else, it was cold, and she had to tilt it towards the window to make out the shape of it. "Tails. The decision goes to me."

She couldn't see Barba roll his eyes but he gave a very strong impression of doing so. "Objection. I didn't agree to this."

"I don't care. We're sharing," she said, pocketing the quarter before she got to her feet, brushing herself off while Barba sat goggling up at her. "It's a big couch-"

"Not that big," he said, and she couldn't decide if the way he was sprawled across the rug was meant to make him look larger than usual or was purely incidental.

"-And I have a sneaking suspicion that you're a lot warmer than I am-"

"Not likely," but his teeth weren't clicking together hard enough to be heard, so she ignored that.

"-And Liv would kill me if you slept on the floor and got sick and died." Case closed, she thought triumphantly when he closed his mouth. She couldn't help rubbing it in: "Does the prosecution rest?"

The degree of cringing disgust he felt was obvious, even in the dark. "No more lawyer jokes. Consider them banned."

 

Barba was right, though she wouldn't admit it now. The couch was _not_ that big.

Shifting again, trying to get comfortable, Rollins started to wonder if the floor was any better. Or maybe the firmness wasn't the problem, maybe it was just that it was so damn _cold-_

"Please stop squirming," Barba said from behind her.

She stilled a moment, then tugged her coat carefully over her arms a little more. Without blankets, and with the rug being far too heavy and inflexible, they'd resigned themselves to using their coats as makeshift covers, layered over their bodies to conserve warmth.

Not a bad plan on paper; in practice it was working out horribly. The couch was freezing, there wasn't enough coat to go around even with two, and Rollins, normally used to being the big spoon, was not adjusting well.

Neither was Barba, it seemed, stiff behind her, his hands bumping into her back again, and she sighed.

"Wrap your arms around me," she said.

"What?" She could feel him breathing, he was so close behind her. Felt when he stopped. Wasn't he supposed to be the practical one?

"Just do it," she said, not wanting to explain what she knew – what he _should_ have known – instinctively. She reached behind, feeling for his arm. "C'mon, I'm fucking freezing, just-" And she tugged him closer, leaning up when he snaked his other arm under and around her after hesitating, and it took a moment of adjusting, realigning their bodies, before they found themselves slotted together and immediately more comfortable for it.

Rollins shivered, watching the shadows play across the curtains, and Barba's arms automatically tightened around her. He _was_ warm, just like she'd suspected, and he smelled nice too, not that she'd tell him so. Instead, she fixed the coats with one hand to the best of her ability before she leaned back against him. "Better?"

He grunted softly.

They laid still and quiet, Rollins watching the curtains wave in the draft, Barba looking at God knew what, until once again the couch's firmness started to get to her. A single point pressing into her hip painfully, and she wondered for a moment if she'd forgotten to unclip her gun or her badge. But no, they were on the table next to her belt, visible shapes in the darkness, so it had to be something else stabbing into her. A spring maybe?

"Stop moving," Barba said when she started to squirm again.

"I- This couch, it's just so-" She shifted back further, pressing against him accidentally, hoping to get a crucial inch's distance from whatever it was digging into her hipbone, feeling like the princess with the pea. This was a fucking _rock_ for all she could tell.

"Stop. Moving," he bit out, likely annoyed at being crushed into the couch. The peril of being the big spoon.

"Just- Wait a sec, let me just-" And she shifted one last time, sliding about half an inch down, relieved when the spring or whatever it was didn’t poke at her anymore, and she could finally relax, his knees tucked in close behind her own. "Okay, sorry, there was-"

"The couch, you said," he rumbled unhappily, low and close. "Stop. It's annoying."

Her eyes widened, but she resisted the urge to shift anymore, uncomfortable for a new reason. "Sorry," she said, dragging the _y_ out sarcastically and against her will, honestly.

She felt him sigh, warm air exhaled against the back of her neck. "Just go to sleep. Please."

Rollins bit her lip, immediately feeling more awake, hating her contrary nature. What was it with her always going left when a man told her to go right? Maybe Liv was right and she _did_ need therapy.

More thoughts started to swirl around her head, and she tapped the curve of the couch with her finger absently, thinking, shifting her feet and wishing she didn't have to sleep with her boots on like a cowboy, knocking against Barba's feet.

"Oops," she whispered at once, and shifted entirely unconsciously, pressing up against him, and felt him inhale sharply. He'd been so still, she thought he'd been sleeping, and at first she wondered if she'd caught him in the stomach with her elbow. She turned her head to apologize, looking over her shoulder and twisting into him, but then a number of things became apparent all at once.

For starters, she had not elbowed him.

"Please… Stop. Moving." Barba said it very slowly, his eyes clenched shut, but his arms tightened around her when she tried to ease away. His heart was pounding against her back – how hadn't she noticed? And his breathing, barely audible, was actually rather shallow.

Not to mention his obvious… Condition.

"Why, Counselor, I had no idea," she said, knowing it was the worst time to tease him and jumping at the opportunity anyway. Seriously, therapy. She had to at least reconsider it.

He still hadn't opened his eyes. _What you can't see can't get you_. "It's not personal," he said dully, not at all annoyed the way she might have expected. "Just what happens when someone-"

"Grinds on you?" Rollins almost managed to sound innocent when she said it, because in hindsight yeah, that's basically what she'd been doing. Purely by accident, of course, but there wasn't really a better term for shoving your ass into someone else's lap. Repeatedly.

"Yes," he said, finally opening his eyes. He looked even more tired than before, almost sad. "I'm sorry if…" He started to pull away, as much as he could manage in the tiny space he had. "I can sleep on the floor if you want."

Rollins caught his arm, thinking only of how much she didn't want to lose all that delicious body heat. Her back was actually warm for a change. "No, no. It's fine. I don't- I mean, if _you_ don't mind, then I don't mind."

He stared at her for a moment before he settled back where he'd been, and she turned away, looked for anything else to focus on other than the reality of Barba lying awkwardly behind her, obviously aroused and equally obviously unhappy about it, probably wishing it away with the kind of desperation most often found in teenaged boys.

Their coats, once again, had slipped; she could see his hands, clasped before her at about waist level, trembling slightly. Not from cold, she thought, though she could see her breath as a pale cloud in the air. His whole body was trembling, now that she was paying any sort of attention.

She couldn't help but wonder, had he been happy at any point during the day?

Rollins slowly curved back against him, listening to his shaky inhalation. "You said I shouldn't take it personally," she said, pressing her ass into his lap, feeling him stiff in his pants.

"You…" She watched his hands tighten around each other, felt his arms around her waist. "I don't-" Barba cleared his throat, pulling away from her even as he refused to let her go. He couldn't decide whether he was coming or going.

She could decide for him. "What if I wanted to? Take this personally, I mean." She reached out slowly, wrapped a hand around his.

His nervous gulp was audible, but he still rocked against her compulsively when she slowly rubbed the length of his index finger. Just like last time, his fingers twitched.

"This isn't a good idea," he said as she rocked back against him slightly, a very small, almost inconsequential movement. He wasn't moving to meet her, but he wasn't moving at all.

"Why? Because we work together?" She started plucking at the cuff of his sleeve, undoing the buttons. They gleamed just enough for her to see them in the dark of the room.

His breathing was growing faster by the second. "Yes, obviously that. You- I- Nobody needs this kind of- We're professionals?" He sounded unsure when she got his cuff unbuttoned, his sleeve pushed up so she could wrap her hand around his wrist, feel its thickness. But he didn't pull away when she slid her fingers up his forearm, even if he started to sound a bit… Distressed. "We- _I_ have a reputation, and-"

"Are you really worried about your reputation?" She arched her body, smirking when she heard him gasp, felt how hard he was. There was no mistaking it now, not when he leaned in towards her this time.

"I am right now," he whispered, and it sounded like an admittance when he rubbed against her, panting softly into her hair. "I- You won't…"

"You know I don't kiss and tell," she said. It didn't sound the least bit bitter.

"God, that's not what I meant," he groaned, grabbing the edge of the couch suddenly as he rolled his hips against her properly, the way he'd resisted all along. He let out a breathy, almost desperate sort of sound, nothing she would've ever imagined him making, and Rollins finally put two and two together.

"Are you going to come?" It came out slightly more incredulous than she'd meant, but really. It should have been… Pathetic. He'd barely touched her. They still had all their clothes on. They weren't _teenagers._

He didn't say anything, just nodded; she felt it, a brief motion against her hair, before he pressed his forehead to her shoulder.

She looked down at where she held onto his wrist, watched his hand flex, the other gripping the couch. He'd barely touched her… She seized his hand, guided it to her crotch, pressed his fingers hard against her. Barely enough with her legs closed, just a tease really, but when she asked him again, "Are you going to come for me?"

Well. It was enough for him.

Barba released the couch to cling to her instead, hold her close as he tensed, pressed his hot face against the side of her neck, breaths heaving out of him as he came.

And Rollins had thought she'd left her dryhumping days long behind her. She felt a smile break across her face as he laid trembling, practically on top of her. He was heavy, and the heat came off him in waves as he struggled to catch his breath.

Then his fingers twitched against her and her smile disappeared, remembering how big his hands were. How long his fingers were.

"I'm not normally like this," he rasped as she pushed him back to lie against the couch like before. "I don't- What are you doing?"

She got the impression he was trying to apologize, but she was too busy unbuttoning her pants to pay much attention. Good thing she'd already taken her belt off. "You're familiar with _quid pro quo_ , aren't you?"

His throat clicked when he swallowed as she resumed laying against him, directing his hand back to her crotch. Instinctively, he nudged his knee between hers, parting her legs as she pushed his hand down the front of her open pants, over her underwear. The coats were down around their legs but she didn't care, she felt warm enough when he curled his fingers, felt soft cotton.

"This is a bad idea," Barba repeated, tone strange as he rubbed one finger over the material, along the nub of her clit, making her clench deliciously against him and squeeze his wrist.

"You keep saying that," she said breathlessly as he kept up the short strokes of his finger. It was a tight fit, even with the button popped and the zipper down; all he could move was his fingers, and those barely. "Why now?"

"Because," he said, and for a moment she thought he'd leave it at that, but he didn't stop. Instead, he wrapped his free arm around her chest, fingers spanning her ribs. "Sweating would be bad," he continued. "Because of the cold."

"Oh." It honestly hadn't occurred to her, and when he bracketed her clit between two fingers, cotton dragging against her, she had a seriously hard time caring. Freezing to death didn't seem that bad if this is how it happened. "So just… Don't make me sweat." Rollins felt rather proud of herself for coming up with such a smart solution.

He snorted, harsh against her ear, but he didn't stop what he was doing either. "I don't think this is a workable plan," he murmured into her ear.

"Give it your best shot," she said, and let out a moan when he slid his fingers further down, pressing her panties up against where she was wettest. He had to be wet too, she thought, sticky in his pants, so tight and uncomfortable, but he hadn't complained yet. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been with a man who hadn't seen to his own comfort first, and she recalled how he'd looked when she'd touched him by the vending machine, how torn he'd been between being close and keeping her at a distance. His concern about his reputation.

"You don't do this very often, do you?" It was totally the wrong thing to ask, out before she could stop it, and she was glad again that he couldn't see her face.

"I tried to tell you," he said, a hint of bleak _I told you so_ in his voice. Not smugness, not about this. No wonder she'd never heard any gossip; she'd thought he was just discrete, that being married to the job was just a saying. "I don't do this at all anymore," he added, like he couldn't help himself.

Catholics and their urges to confess, she thought wildly. She couldn't bring herself to care about any of it, not when his fingers were moving so slowly, tracing back over her clit. Christ, she'd made a very bad decision. _Don't make me sweat._ That meant slow, and slow was bad. Slow was very bad when she knew full well how much of an assiduous dick Barba could be.


	5. Barba/OFC, the one where Barba did porn in college AKA the one that's just blatant het PWP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba/OFC, was going to be Barba/Rollins but I never got that far.
> 
> Warning: derogatory and homophobic language.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a weakness for "X has a secret porn star past" stories. It's inexplicable. I had a whole plot worked out for this, and it was going to end up Barba/Rollins, but what's here is just porn. There's no buts about it. It's just porn. Pretty nasty porn. BLAME JENNY.

"…Between the video surveillance, the eye witness testimony, and the physical evidence…" Barba trailed off. "Am I _boring_ you, Detective?"

Rollins glanced up from the water ring on the table she'd been so interested in, a blush suffusing her cheeks. "No, sorry, I…" Her eyes dropped quickly from his face to focus on his tie. He resisted the urge to check there was nothing on it. "Sorry, just have a lot on my mind."

Barba sighed, gathering what patience he had. She hadn't been back long, and he'd dealt with enough cops to know forced leave – and it _had_ been forced, no one was kidding themselves otherwise – often left them off-balance for the first few days when they returned to duty. As if he wasn't already more than willing to cut her some slack after the Patton case. Between her testimony being excluded and the plea bargain, he'd been left with a vague sense of guilt. Nothing he wasn't used to.

But here Rollins was, back in his office, this time going over a fairly straight-forward DV case, and she'd spent more time staring off into space than she had paying attention. It wouldn't do.

He leaned forward, setting his pen down. "Amanda."

Rollins still didn't look up. Was it him? Was this- Did it remind her of the last time they'd been alone together, the circumstances? Was it too much too soon?

"Do you need another couple of days? I could ask someone else, Amaro or-"

She shook her head, mouth a firm line. "It's fine. I just…" She made a concentrated effort to look him in the eye, and for a moment she managed it.

 

> A young man alone on a couch in a nondescript living room, his hand down the front of his jeans as he watched something on the TV.
> 
> Cutting through the overdramatic female moaning coming from the TV: the sound of a door opening and closing, and the man whipped his hand out from his pants and scrambled for the remote, hitting what had to be the wrong button as the moaning became outrageously loud.
> 
> "What the fuck?" A woman entered the room, comically alarmed, as he finally pressed the right button and silence descended. He did not turn around.
> 
> "What the fuck are you doing?" She had her hands on her hips, looking from the TV to the back of his head. He was visibly nervous, eyes darting from the TV to the wall to the floor. Over and over. "I thought you were going to be out all day," she said flatly. "Job-hunting."
> 
> He still didn't turn around, but his shoulders hunched in a semblance of guilt.
> 
> She slowly walked to the couch, around it, loomed over him. "That's what you said to me this morning. You were going to look for a job. Instead you're here, watching…" She snatched the black VHS rental box off the top of the TV and scanned it with a look of disgust. "'Alice's Adventures In Anal-Land 3.'" She waved the box at him. "Are you fucking serious?"
> 
> He swallowed, but still tried a smile. Tried to charm her, rising slowly, hands spread wide. "Babe, look, I-"
> 
> She smacked him across the face with the box and he dropped, stunned, back to the couch in a sprawl. "Don't _babe_ me. I let you stay over for months _rent-free_. Because you _lost your job_. And this is how you repay me? With lies?" She shook her head, looking back at the box, sighed gustily. "I don't know what's worse, that I let you get away with it or that there were three of these fucking things." She tossed the box at him; it landed on his chest. "I'm done. Get out."
> 
> "No, wait, wait." He pushed the box away, leaning forward to grab her wrist. "You can't just kick me out, where am I going to go?"
> 
> She shrugged him off. "Why should I care? Go leech off someone else."
> 
> "I don't- You know I don't have anyone else." He reached for her again but she stepped away. He stumbled forward, off the couch, catching the hem of her skirt. "Please, I'm sorry. I fucked up, I know, just- Don't kick me out."
> 
> "Let go." She tried to push him away but he just rocked back with the movement, clinging to her skirt, face red where she'd hit him earlier.
> 
> "Please, I'll- I'll clean. More. I'll do the dishes. Take out the garbage, do your taxes, whatever. Name it, I'll do it. I'll do anything," he said, pawing at her.
> 
> She stilled, looking down at him. A slow smile broke across her face. "Anything?"
> 
> He smiled back, hopeful. "Anything you want."
> 
> She stood up straight, raking her eyes over him before pointedly looking at the tape box on the floor, the silent TV. "Alright. Let me fuck you and you can stay."
> 
> His smile became confused, almost goofy. "What?"
> 
> "You heard me."
> 
> He let her go but didn't get up from where he knelt on the floor. "That's it?" He looked at her bare legs, up her body, gaze lingering on her chest. "Sure. Okay."
> 
> She smoothed her skirt. "Good. Take off your clothes; I'll be right back." She walked off, leaving him to climb back up on the couch, rubbing his cheek. After a moment he pulled off his shirt, folded it and set it on the floor beside the couch. He was slim, almost on the skinny side, but his shoulders were broad. He had the look of someone who hadn't finished filling out, a residual sort of gawkiness in how his arms didn't quite match up with his big hands, how his face didn't quite carry off his beakish nose.
> 
> He rubbed his cheek once more before settling back on the couch at the sound of approaching footsteps. Whatever he saw off-camera made him sit up and grin crookedly, uncomprehending.
> 
> She was back, and she'd traded her skirt and blouse in for a bra and a strap-on. In contrast with the delicate pink of her bra, the straps of the harness were thick and black. "I thought I told you to take off your clothes."
> 
> His grin didn't fade. "What the fuck is that?"
> 
> She looked down at where he was staring. "What does it look like?"
> 
> "It looks like a dildo," he said, eyebrows drawn together.
> 
> "That's because it is." She stood next to him, petting a hand over his hair. "Good to know your eyes still work even if the rest of you isn't willing to."
> 
> He didn't move away, seemingly transfixed by the artificial dick now inches from his face. "I thought you said you wanted to fuck me."
> 
> "I do." She handed him the plastic bottle she'd carried in with her before sitting down on the couch beside him. "I thought you'd like to try anal firsthand for a change instead of just watching it."
> 
> He examined the bottle, blushing.
> 
> "That's for you, but let's see how they do it in the video. Did little Alice get lubed up?"
> 
> His eyes widened as he nodded energetically. "Yeah. Yes."
> 
> She pursed her lips. "Hmm." Picked up the remote from where he dropped it down the side of the couch and hit a button, producing a chipmunk-esque noise from the TV and a whirring – the tape rewinding. "I don't think I believe you. Let's see." She hit stop, and then play. Immediately loud groaning, mostly male, issued from the TV.
> 
> She watched with an extremely critical eye, but her free hand went to his lap, stroking over the crotch of his jeans so he hissed. His gaze drifted from the TV set to her fake dick, jutting up from between her legs, but he didn't do anything to push her hand away.
> 
> "Oh! Oh yes!" Even louder female cries, almost shrill, and she hit stop again, cutting them off.
> 
> "Lied again," she said, lowering the remote as she squeezed him hard enough that he yelped, curled around her hand and dropped the bottle of lube to the floor with a thunk. "What a bad habit you've picked up."
> 
> "I'm sorry," he said again, grabbing her wrist ineffectually.
> 
> She let him go, her hand going to the back of his head. "Let's put that mouth of yours to a better use than empty apologies."
> 
> He shook his head, staring at her lap."No. No way." If he was trying for reluctance he wasn't pulling it off.
> 
> She resumed petting his hair, threading her fingers through it. "How much money do you have in your bank account?"
> 
> He didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "Twelve dollars."
> 
> She smiled broadly. "Then I hope you like sleeping in the street because that's definitely not enough for a hotel room. Now either you suck _this_ dick-" she waggled her hips a little, setting the sizeable dildo swaying "-or you get used to sucking stranger dicks for dollars."
> 
> He licked his lips. It was probably supposed to look nervous, but there was something about his wide eyes that just made it look anticipatory instead. Then he leaned over slowly and, after licking his lips a second time, took the head into his mouth, cheeks hollowing as he sucked on it.
> 
> "That's it," she said, her hand resting on top of his head as it started to bob. "That's it, don't be shy," and she pushed his head down, her hand fisted in his thick hair. His hand fell heavily on her thigh, but he didn't try to push her back, just let her force his head down, force him to take more of her cock into his mouth. Just when he started to find some sort of rhythm, she dragged him up by the hair. "On your knees."
> 
> He slid down from the couch to the floor, and shuffled on his knees between her legs.
> 
> "That's right, suck that dick," she said, smiling indulgently down at him when he immediately resumed sucking. "You're a natural. What else have you been doing while I've been at work? Blowing the neighbors?"
> 
> He made a noise, muffled by the dick in his mouth, and looked up at her.
> 
> "Was that a no?" She fisted his hair again, set a faster pace that made him choke, sputter when she let him up, catch his breath a moment before forcing him back down. This time both hands rested on his head, pushing, holding him down. "You suck cock like a pro."
> 
> He certainly lacked the hesitancy of an amateur. His hands ghosted over her calves, her thighs, before drifting away, letting her control him.
> 
> "Such a good little cocksucker," she said when she let him back up to gasp, smoothing his hair back off his forehead. A string of saliva connected his mouth to the silicone cockhead, wet and gleaming. "You like it, don't you?"
> 
> He shook his head, but his hand was back down his jeans, playing with himself.
> 
> She nodded at him. "Yes, you do. Don't lie anymore, I know you do." She shoved him back down and he slid his mouth down the shaft, tongue dragging along the underside as if it were a real cock, and she laughed when he went back to sucking eagerly. "You do, you like it. You like sucking dick, you little faggot."
> 
> He made a sharp series of noises that might have been denials, his hand moving faster in his jeans.
> 
> She laughed again. "Sure you're not." She grabbed a fistful of his hair again, gave him a shake as he panted open-mouthed. "Turn around. Sit."
> 
> He did as she said, sitting with his back against the couch and wheezing, leaning with his head against the cushion, his face and chest flushed red. She shifted over, her knees firmly planted on the cushion on either side of his head, and straddled his face. Her bare feet pressing against his shoulders, she rose up on her knees to dip just the end of the dick into his waiting mouth.
> 
> "Take it," she said, one hand tight on the back of the couch, keeping her balance as she stared down at him. "Take that dick." Another few inches, and she started to rock over him, into his mouth. His throat worked visibly as he sucked, fumbled the zipper of his jeans down and pulled out his own cock through the slit of his boxers, jerking it fitfully as she worked up to fucking his face.
> 
> "To think I could've been renting you out all along," she remarked, grabbing his hair with her free hand, watching as he sat back and took it, took her big rubber cock in his mouth, down his throat. "I know some guys who would love to meet you. You could finally make some money, start paying me back. Sound good?"
> 
> He did his best to moan louder, a plaintive sound, his hand moving faster.
> 
> "No?" She let her hand slip from his hair to the base of the dildo, pressing it hard against her pelvis as she shoved into his mouth. "That's okay, you can be _my_ little fag from now on. I'll take it out in trade." She sounded out of breath, her movements becoming jerkier. "Christ, if only I had a real cock," she said, shifting her knee so her stance was wider, so she could squat lower, fuck his throat deeper. "I'd- Ah- I'd shoot right down your throat. Bust all over your adorable face, _fuck!_ " She let out a sharp cry and trembled, hips jerking, choking him, and he had to grab his balls, squeeze sharply to keep from coming in turn.
> 
> She recovered quickly, getting to her feet with a modicum of grace, looking down at him as he wiped his wet, swollen mouth against his bare arm. "Take off your pants," she said, kicking his knee with one foot. "Get on the couch. On your stomach."
> 
> He got unsteadily to his feet, unzipped jeans dropping to his ankles immediately, but he had to push his boxers down, hard dick bobbing as he stood back up. For a moment they stood next to each other, and it was clear he wasn't much taller than she was – maybe a couple of inches. But then, without further hesitation, he got on the couch, laid down, inhaling sharply as his cock pressed against the cushion. His hips jerked as he humped the couch once before he laid still.
> 
> She straddled his thighs, pressed her hands to his lower back, holding him down, and rocked her hips so the dildo slid up between his asscheeks. "Just like Alice," she said, hands going to his ass, holding him open. She arched over him, let a lazy gob of spit drop from her lips to his asshole. Did it again, smirking when he twitched under her before she gripped the cock he'd worked so hard to slick up and rubbed the head against him, pushed in.
> 
> "Fuck!" He tensed under her, but she was unfazed by his sudden show of resistance. She pushed in a handful of inches before pulling out, making him whimper. Pushed in again, deeper. Those whimpers became louder, more like sobs.
> 
> She didn't waste any time on foreplay. In moments she'd fallen back into her customary driving pace, her hands tight on his hips as she fucked him hard, making the couch springs squeak, barely audible under his constant desperate noises.
> 
> "Listen to you," she said, rolling her hips against him in a long, slow stroke that had him pressing his face into the cushion and whining. "You sound just like that slut from the movie. Should I call you Alice?" She pulled out slowly before thrusting in hard, making him cry out. "Are you a slut, Alice?"
> 
> "Yes," he gasped, grabbing at the side of the couch cushion.
> 
> "Tell me you like it," she said, repeating the motion. Slow out, then hard and fast back in, biting her lip and grinning when he sobbed. "You fucking slut. Say it. Say you like it."
> 
> "I- Oh God," he groaned, squirming under her when she started to resume her earlier brutal pace. "Oh God, yes."
> 
> "Yes what?" She was breathing hard, as sweaty and pink with exertion as he was. "Yes _what_ , Alice? Only a faggot would love cock this much. Say you love cock."
> 
> "I love cock," he said, voice cracking, eyes clenched shut. He whimpered when she pulled out completely, shuffled back on the couch and tugged at his hips, hauling his ass up to meet her, forcing him to curve beneath her, and he did so easily, rubbing against the couch at the same time, moaning shamelessly when she thrust in at the new angle.
> 
> "Look at that ass. So hungry for my cock," she said, buried to the hilt, the straps of the harness pressed against his skin. "Say you're hungry for it. Say you're a hungry little slut."
> 
> "I-" he squirmed, rocked back against her. "I'm a hungry little slut," he managed, sounding hoarse, sweat rolling down his face. "I love it, I love your thick cock in my ass."
> 
> She reached forward, grabbed a handful of his sweat-damp hair, exposing his throat, leaving him to bend at a painful angle. "Again. Again, slut."
> 
> He moaned lustily, shoving his ass back towards her, rolling through the motion to grind down against the cushion. "I love it, I'm a-a cockslut and I- I- Oh, Christ." He shoved his hips hard against the couch and groaned harshly as he came, mouth dropping open, and she gave him a rough shake as she thrust into him, fucked him through his orgasm until he reached back frantically to grasp her thigh. "Please," he rasped.
> 
> She pulled out for the last time, released him so his head dropped forward to the cushion, and slapped his ass as she climbed off him. One hand already going to a strap, loosening the harness, as she walked away, saying, "Clean this mess up. We'll discuss your job prospects later. No more freeloading for you."
> 
> Abandoned, he lay boneless and covered in sweat on the couch, eyes still closed, a faint smile on his face.

 

Then Rollins's cheeks went pinker than ever, downright red, and her focus slipped to a point left of his ear. It was bizarre.

"I need a minute," she blurted out, and shoved her chair back from the table, fleeing the room. There was no getting around it: she _fled_.

Barba sat back in his chair, spinning the pen slowly with one finger. What the hell was going on?


	6. Rollins/Barba/Carisi, the one with the threesome proposal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meant to be Rollins/Barba/Carisi but I never got that far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this back in December (hence the Christmas reference) when I started toying with the idea of a threesome. This is probably the most salvageable out of everything.

Sonny snapped his fingers. "Nutmeg," he said, the note of triumphant in his voice totally unsuited to his current circumstances. He rocked back on his knees slightly when Barba shoved at him.

 

"Is this pathetic?"

Sonny, glass halfway to his lips, looked over at Rollins. "Is what pathetic?"

She gestured vaguely between them. "This. Us. It's Christmas Eve and we're the only ones still here."

"Eh." He'd done worse, like the year he'd refused to go home for the holidays and had ended up couchsurfing/possibly squatting in a friend of a friend's apartment in Alphabet City. Sleeping on someone else's sofabed and eating uncooked Cup Noodles for Christmas dinner was the height of pathetic. This barely ranked.

"Everyone else left early to go be with their families," Rollins continued, becoming more visibly morose by the second. "Liv has Noah, Finn's with his son and _his_ family, Nick's with…" She tossed back her shot, glass clattering against the bartop. "Don't you have family, Carisi?" she asked, waving her hand at the bartender at the far end.

He grimaced. "Too much."

"That great, huh?" She gave him the measuring look of someone who wouldn't hesitate to start comparing family trainwreck stories.

"I love them, but let's just say if we got called into work tomorrow I wouldn't complain," he said, not in the mood for the dick-measuring for once, and they clinked their refilled glasses together in solidarity before continuing to drink steadily in silence.

Three rounds later and Rollins propped herself up on the bar like she needed the extra support, which she probably did given how much they'd been put away since everyone else had split. "Speaking of work, you know who's probably still at it?"

Sonny shook his head very slowly, diverted like a betta fish by his reflection in the mirror behind the bar and the lines of bottles.

"Barba." She said this with a satisfaction that Sonny found strangely and immediately understandable.

"You think?" He considered her odd little smile.

"Oh, for sure." Her smile was growing.

"Huh." He turned away, but instead of looking at his own reflection he tried imagining Barba alone in his office. Working hard and long into the night. So devoted to the job. Hunched over his desk, maybe with his sleeves rolled up, the lighting low and warm because it was late and his eyes were tired but he still had some notes to go over, and he'd start tapping the end of his pen against his lower lip as he reconsidered some tricky bit of legalese. _Tap tap tap_ , then the end would slip into his mouth and he'd bite it, not hard, just set his teeth against the warm metal, touch the tip of his tongue to it, and Sonny peered at Rollins. If her line of thinking was anything like his then he knew why she was smiling so dreamily.

"Now _that_ would be pathetic," he said, letting the daydream fade. " _If_ he was actually there."

"You don't think he is? You don't know him so well," Rollins said.

"I bet you fifty bucks he isn't," Sonny said, pushing the issue.

"You're- You realize I'm a compulsive gambler, right?" She laughed. "I mean, this is not a secret."

Sonny actually hadn't known that, although it did explain a lot of things, but he didn't bother to feel bad. A friendly bet was not going to shove her off the wagon. If anything, being alone and bored and depressed on Christmas Eve would shove her off the wagon. Dropkick her, really. Sonny was probably doing her a favor, hanging out with her. "So what you're saying is I'm right? Because that's what I'm hearing."

"That is absolutely not what I'm saying." She drained her vodka and turned bodily around on her stool, overdoing it on the momentum and spinning away so Sonny had to reach out and grab her shoulder, pull her back around so she was facing him. She knocked his hand away like she hadn't absolutely needed the help. "A hundred bucks and he _so_ is."

"Deal."

They shook on it.

"So…" Sonny scratched his neck. "Do we like… Go over there? Or what? How do we find out?"

Rollins stared hard at him. "We… No, we don't go over there. _Of course_ we don't go over there."

"Then what? Because until we find out nobody wins. So long as we don't know, he's there and he's not there. Like the cat." He fixed his collar, fingers trailing down to his necktie, loosening it a very necessary couple of inches. "Schroedinger's cat."

"Schroedinger's Barba," Rollins said, and they both snorted. "No, look, we're overthinking this." She fumbled her phone out of her purse and shook it at him. "We just call him."

Sonny frowned. "That proves nothing, his phone is glued to his hand. He could be at home taking a shit and he'd probably still answer."

She rolled her eyes. "No, dumbass, we call his office phone. He'd have to be in his office to answer, right? If he answers then I win, and if he doesn't then you win. Easy peasy."

This sounded simple enough that Sonny was immediately mistrustful. But after looking continuously between Rollins's face and phone he still couldn't find any obvious flaws or ways in which she could be gaming him, so he nodded his acceptance of her plan.

She tapped away at her phone and held it up to her ear. "It's ringing," she said excitedly, like he was the one who had forgotten that phones sometimes did that, and then started bobbing her head along to… Something. Maybe the creepy children's choir cover of _Feliz Navidad_ playing in the bar, making him feel like he was going to get grusomely murdered in a festive manner any second, maybe whatever she heard on the line. Her face froze after a moment. "What's his extension?"

Sonny spread his hands. "The fuck would I know?"

She rolled her eyes at him again – he was treating this as practice for tomorrow, when it was all the acknowledgement he'd get from a full quarter of his family – and went back to listening to whatever was coming down the line. The world's largest phone tree, for all Sonny knew, but at least he could drink instead of listen so he went back to doing that.

Rollins's face lit up two shots later – Sonny'd thought the switch to shots was an inspired move on his part, so much more efficient – and she eagerly tapped something into her phone before shushing him pointlessly. "It's ringing," she repeated, just eager this time – probably worried she wasn't going to win – and he shook his head again as she put it on speaker and held the phone between them so they could both hear it ring obnoxiously loud. Why was the volume so high? Was Rollins secretly deaf as well as addicted to scratch cards?

"He's not going to be there," Sonny muttered, and she leaned forward to cover his mouth with her hand, mostly slapping his cheek instead.

"Quiet-"

"Barba," said a familiar voice.

They locked eyes over the phone.

"Hello?"

"Sorry, wrong number," Rollins said in a rush, and almost dropped her phone in her hurry to hang up. Once she'd managed it she pointed at Sonny, poked him hard in the chest, and shouted, "Ha! I told you! I so told you!"

Sonny wasn't even upset about the hundred bucks. "He's really still there." Sonny tried to figure out what he was feeling. It was more complex that usual. He wasn't used to it.

"Yup." Rollins tucked her phone back in her purse. "Just like I said. Still at it. The guy never quits."

Sonny frowned. "But it's Christmas Eve. And it's like nine." He checked his watch. "Eleven. Eleven-thirty. Why isn't he at home?"

Rollins shrugged. "I told you, he's working."

"That's so…" Sonny struggled to figure out what it was _so._ He was feeling something under all the warm layers of liquor. "Do you think he's there all by himself?" Barba had only said two words but to Sonny's ears they had sounded tired. World-weary even.

"Probably," Rollins said automatically, but then after a moment her expression became more thoughtful. "His problem is a fundamental lack of Christmas spirit. That's why he's working."

Sonny wasn't sure that really tracked but it made a kind of emotional sense so he went with it. "He's Scrooge?"

"Exactly. He's Scrooge… Without the greed. But Scrooge got help and ended up less Scrooge-like!" Rollins's hand settled heavily on his arm, her eyes intense like his ex-girlfriend's had been when she suggested they get life insurance together. "We should help him."

The mess of feelings Sonny had been experiencing since Barba picked up began to resolve itself into _one_ feeling: determination. "That's our whole job. Protecting, serving. Helping people. We _should_ help him. How do we help him?"

"By teaching him the true meaning of Christmas, of course," Rollins said, shaking him slightly in her enthusiasm. "Like the muppets did to Scrooge!"

"We're the muppets?" Sonny was starting to think that last shot had been a bad idea. He was having trouble following Rollins's logic, but then she seemed a lot more familiar with the source material.

" _You're_ definitely a muppet," she said, patting his hand all _it's okay, it's not your fault you're a muppet._ Very reassuring.

"Okay, but _how_ are we going to help him or teach him or whatever? Like what is the game plan here?" Sonny wanted a solid answer from her for once. No more doubletalk or muppettalk or whatever.

Rollins looked like she was going to shake him again, this time in annoyance. "God, I don't know! I like to play things by ear, I'm that kind of girl."

"I'm not going all the way back to Hogan Place just to play it by ear," Sonny grumbled.

She threw her hands in the air. "For fuck's- Let's just pump him full of eggnog and then give him a handie or something. That work for you?"

"I don't think that's what happened in the original."

Rollins gave him a look like she'd seen a different version. A better version, from the sound of it. "Let's be honest, it would've if Michael Caine had looked like Barba."

Sonny considered this. "True. Yeah, alright."

"Great." She slapped her hand on the bar and stood up, sat back down immediately when her legs didn't work properly first time around, and then tried again with more success. "I'll take my winnings in nog and bourbon instead of dollars."

"Bourbon? Seriously?" Sonny rose from his seat with far less difficulty than Rollins, but started listing to the left when he headed towards the door. "Rum."

"Fuck that, I won, lady's choice." Forward progress was easier accomplished when they gave in and wrapped an arm around each other. The world's only single-team three-legged race. The height difference barely mattered when they were both walking at a permanent lean. "Bourbon."

"I'm buying," he pointed out. "Rum. And nutmeg."

She made the kind of horrific horking noise that he wouldn't be surprised if she was destined to repeat multiple times the next day, bent over a toilet and regretting her life choices. " _Nutmeg._ Cinnamon!"

"Nutmeg," he insisted. Then they were out the door and into the light drizzle of nighttime rain.


	7. Barisi, the one where Barba helps Sonny with his homework

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba/Carisi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this back when I was struggling to produce a sequel to "Window Shopping." Sonny was going to end up paying Barba back in blowjobs. Too bad I didn't get that far! :D

Sonny clicked 'refresh' on the page and swore.

_B_

 

"Counselor, can I ask you something?"

They'd all made the trek over to Hogan Place to go over a case, but afterward Sonny had waved Rollins and Fin off, told them he'd meet up with them at the diner in a bit, girded his loins and gone back into Barba's office.

Still seated at his desk where they'd left him, Barba didn't look up from the rapid-fire typing he was doing. "I assume you're more than _capable_ of it _-_ "

Sonny resisted the urge to flip him off. "Yeah, yeah, what are you, my mother? Correcting my grammar."

A shitty little grin appeared on Barba's face as he kept working, eyes moving over the screen. "Ask."

Shifting from one foot to the other, Sonny tried to think how to phrase it. "You have to promise not to say anything when I ask. No… Comments."

That finally got Barba's attention. He shut the laptop and clasped his hands on top of it, focusing on Sonny right when he didn't want it. Giving in to the urge to fidget, he touched the weird statue of the four dancing people on the desk. [How could Barba work with all this shit on his desk? It was distracting. Didn't he find it distracting?]

"I take it this isn't work-related," Barba said.

Sonny shook his head, nudging the nameplate straight, the collection of letters, remembering the last time he'd brought up anything that wasn't work-related. That had been… Messy. He resisted the urge to smirk.

It wasn't until he started flicking the tasseled edge of the miniature flag that Barba had enough, smacking at his hand with a speed and force that surprised Sonny. "Stop it."

Sonny, shame-faced, clasped his hands behind his back, the one stinging. "I want to ask a favor."

"I thought you wanted to ask me a question." Barba held up a hand before he could say anything. "I'm sorry. Just ask already, the suspense is killing me."

Sonny stared at Barba's left eyebrow as he spoke because he couldn't bring himself to look him in the eye. Not while the useless part of his brain kept whispering about Barba slapping him elsewhere. "I'm taking some night classes-"

" _Really._ " Barba covered his mouth, recomposed his expression into something approximating bland interest. "Continue."

Sonny flushed. "Look, I got a B on my last paper, and I don't want another B because that's embarrassing, it's criminal law and that's like my whole _job_ , you know? 'Sides, I've gotten As in everything else except for this one stupid class, but I was wondering if you could maybe take a look at my next paper and tell me if there's something I'm missing?"

Barba's eyebrows had risen rapidly during Sonny's speech. "You want _me_ to check your homework?"

He sighed and turned away. "Never mind. Forget I said anything." He'd known it was a long shot but he'd asked anyway, thinking the worst he could get in return was a _no_. Of course that _no_ had to come wrapped up in caustic verbal gift-wrap that Barba put together special for him, but what had he expected?

Really though, the guy could've just said he was too busy. Simple. Sonny wouldn't have questioned it, especially not after today when they'd just dropped an impressively sticky case in his lap. Did he have to be such a dick all the time? He was lucky he was hot or he'd never get away with it.

"Detective! Carisi, wait."

Sonny already had his hand on the doorknob. "What?"

Barba was actually on his feet, though he hadn't come out from behind his desk. "I'm sorry, that was…"

"Uncalled for? Mean? Dickish?" Sonny supplied when Barba visibly struggled to find the right descriptor.

"Uncalled for," Barba agreed, and finally emerged from his nest of files and folders. He adjusted his suspenders, resettled them on his shoulders as he stepped over a number of banker boxes, picked his way over to where Sonny stood refusing to be distracted by the sight of Barba's hands sliding up the thick straps. He'd had months to get used to the motion, there wasn't anything novel about it anymore. Not in the least.

"How long is your paper?"

Sonny frowned down at him. "Not very. Nine pages double-spaced."

"That's it?" Barba made a face. "Why didn't you say that to begin with? What's the topic?"

"Criminal negligence." He narrowed his eyes. "Does this mean you're going to do it?"

Barba spread his hands. "Who am I to get in the way of one man's attempt at bettering himself through institutional learning?"

"So… Yes?"

Barba rolled his eyes, turning back to his desk. "Yes. Bring me a hard copy and I'll look it over."

"Wouldn't it be easier if I emailed it to you?"

"I'm not staring at a screen any longer than I have to," Barba grumbled, hopping over a stack of boxes and almost losing his balance, flopping into his chair harder than he'd probably meant to. "Hard copy or don't bother."

"Alright." Sonny was half out the door when he leaned back into the room. "Thanks, Counselor," he said with a smile.

"Don't thank me yet," Barba said, opening his laptop and peering at him over the top of the screen. "I like red pen."


	8. Barisi, the one that's just blatant slash PWP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba/Carisi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on request and originally posted on tumblr. I had a whole idea for this and then it just disappeared overnight. Happens.

"Didn’t you see the sign?” The man was yelling into the phone so loud Sonny could hear him clear across the car, so he had his head shake of denial ready when Barba shot him a look.

“What sign?” Barba demanded.

“The  _outta order_ sign!”

“Do you seriously think we’d be in here if we’d seen a sign that said ‘out of order’?” Barba asked, white-knuckling the handset.

“Well, seeing as how’s you’re in there  _now…”_

“No, we didn’t see any fucking-!” Barba cut himself off, pressed the end of the receiver into his forehead like he wished it was a knife he could stab himself with, and took a deep breath. Sonny was more concerned by what happened next: an over-bright tone and a smile with far too many teeth as Barba tried again with, “No, we did  _not_  see a sign. How long are we going to be in here?”

“Eh, I dunno, forty minutes?”

 _He means an hour_ , Sonny mouthed at Barba, and tapped his watch for good measure when Barba gave him a look of utter incomprehension.

Maybe it was good he didn’t understand, because if forty minutes didn’t make Barba happy then an hour definitely wouldn’t. “Forty fucking minutes?” he snapped again, harshly enough that Sonny took an unconscious step back. “Are you-”

“Forty-five if you keep me on the line like this, pal, so-” and then the flat buzz of the dial tone. Barba stared at the receiver, stared at the wall of the elevator, and then turned to stare up at the pockmarked ceiling like the answer to why God allowed suffering would be revealed to him if he would only look in the right place. Or maybe he was considering climbing out.

Sonny plucked the receiver from his loose grip and dropped it back in the cradle before pushing Barba up against the wall. Stuck in a small metal box with a pissed off Barba for an extended period of time? Yeah, nah. Not happening. “So, we’ve got an hour-”

“Forty minutes,” Barba interrupted with a bitchy smile before Sonny could kiss him.

“He  _means_ an hour,” Sonny replied after, hands going to Barba’s belt buckle. “At least.”

“I’m not having sex in an elevator, Carisi.” There was a bit of a sneer in his voice, but he wasn’t stopping Sonny from unbuttoning his fly.

“Who said anything about sex? I’m planning on blowing you for the next hour,” and he dropped to his knees because he mostly meant it. He meant… 1/6th of it. Ten minutes was 1/6th of an hour, right?

“An hour?” Barba leaned back against the wall and gave him a hooded look. “Contrary to what you might believe, I  _am_ only human.”

“Damn, really?” Sonny asked with a faux-disappointed snap of his fingers before he pushed Barba’s pants down a bit and pulled his shirt front out. “And here I was sure you’d say something about how even though I run my mouth all the time-”

“Which you do,” Barba said with a smile, but it was almost fond instead of annoyed or mean. Sonny knew his bad mood would disappear rapidly at the prospect of getting his dick sucked.

“-Even  _my_ jaw isn’t strong enough for that kind of superhuman… Whatever. Porno nonsense?” Sonny gave up in favor of licking the head of Barba’s cock.

“As if this  _isn’t-_ ”Barba sighed, then sighed again, heavier, as Sonny began to suck “‘-Porno nonsense.’”


	9. Barisi, the one where Barba is the victim of revenge porn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba/Carisi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another failed sequel attempt to "Window Shopping," this had a whole plot where Barba was outted when a terrible hook-up made a sextape without his permission and uploaded it to the internet. I abandoned it primarily because I couldn't make the plot work for the characterization I established, but I did say "fuck it" and wrote the sex anyway so you at least get that.
> 
> Predictably, this is EXTREMELY uneven. I've stripped the all-caps plot notes from it, but hopefully it's still moderately enjoyable. The sex probably doesn't need context anyway, and isn't that _terrible_? The parallels to WS are deliberate and clumsy.
> 
> My first attempt at pushy bottom!Barba and hopefully not my last.

Sonny liked technology as much as any normal person. He liked the little _ding_ noise when he got emails even if he was crap at responding quickly, and he loved MLB.TV as like a whole thing – baseball he could watch on his phone what the fuck _so awesome_ – and he was as vulnerable to falling down the Wikipedia rabbithole as anyone else. One minute checking to see what manhole covers were made of and then suddenly it's three hours later and he's reading about whale dicks or kookaburras or some asinine thing. Awesome.

So yeah, maybe it was more precise to say he liked the internet, but it would be a stretch to say he understood it. Honestly, sometimes he didn't even understand people when he could see them and look at them and, unfortunately, touch them. People were fuckin' nuts sometimes, or maybe just jerks, and the internet somehow seemed to make that all worse. He couldn't figure out how.

"Wait, so this guy just… Hacked some people's phones?"

Fin nodded and kept scrolling. "Basically."

"Why?"

Fin shrugged, adding another name to the list before he continued scrolling. "I dunno. Said he got some offers from some trashy tabloids, but since he dropped it all on Redchanit he probably did it for the kudos."

"The what?" Sonny was still trying to figure out what a redchanit was. His old roommate would've known. Greg had spent a lot of time on his computer getting squirrelly-eyed. Sonny always liked fresh air too much.

"Kudos, man." Fin looked up at him from his slouch over the laptop. " _Kudos_. Internet cred. How do you not know this while I do? Aren't you like 12?"

Sonny should never have let his sister convince him to shave off the 'stache. He knew he looked too young without it. "I got better things to do than surf the web all day."

"Wow," Fin groaned, turning back to the laptop. "'Surf the web'. Yeah, aight, Grandpa."

"Wait." Between the tiger pics – what the fuck was with the internet's tiger obsession – Sonny saw something. Thought he saw something. "Scroll back up."

Fin dutifully flicked his finger across the touchpad. "What, you- Oh shit."

"Ohhhhhh shit," Sonny said, leaning in close over his shoulder. They gawked at the screen. "That's-"

"Sure is."

"And he's-"

"Looks like."

They stared.

"Why is it looping like that?" Sonny couldn't look away. It was hypnotic.

Neither could Fin. "It's a Vine. That's what it does. Six seconds of footage, over and over."

Sonny wondered if his expression was as morbidly transfixed as Fin's. It didn't feel like it. He just felt… He didn't know what he felt. No, that's not true, he totally knew how he felt. Guilty as shit. His hands were fists in his pockets.

He stood up straight and coughed, cleared his throat. "You need to tell the sarge."

Fin boggled at him. "I ain't telling her without a witness."

"What, so she can shoot both messengers? Hell no, I'm too young to die." Sonny waved his hand at Fin, at the laptop, at the whole redchanwhatever. "This is on you. You found this, you tell her. I want nothing to do with this."

Fin pursed his lips. "Coward."

Sonny nodded vigorously.

 

 

 

Watching the video was a mistake for a whole host of reasons, nine-tenths of which Sonny was aware of even before he hit play. Morally, ethically – yeah, it was wrong. What had JLaw said when her pics leaked? Something about how anyone who looked at them was perpetuating a sex crime? She wasn't wrong.

But all of that aside – and Sonny didn't have to try too hard to push it aside, which maybe should have disturbed him more than it did but he just couldn't be bothered to care – watching the video was a mistake because he couldn't unsee it.

This became obvious one afternoon when he and Rollins had dropped in on Barba to deliver some evidence and arrived at the same time a process server had. Nothing unusual about seeing Barba's face darken at the sight of yet another motion from the defense, but when he read it over and said, "Oh, for fuck's sake," sharp and too-familiar, a thrill went through Sonny.

"Let me guess: motion to suppress?" Rollins asked, reacting like a normal person, and Sonny tried to look appropriately interested in their ensuing conversation and not at all like he was picturing Barba on his knees, red-faced and demanding.

 

"Get out," Barba said, two bright spots of color high in his cheeks, expression ugly as Sonny felt. " _Get out_."

 

"Do not expect any favors," Barba started, and Sonny couldn't stop the grin that plastered itself across his face.

"Do not expect me to cut you any slack, look the other way, or fix your mistakes, which I'm sure will continue to be plentiful," Barba continued, eyes narrowing when he noticed Sonny's expression. "Wipe that smirk off your face."

He adopted a more somber look but couldn't help how the corners of his mouth kept twitching upwards. Let Barba rattle off his little disclaimer; Sonny knew the score. And the score was going to involve his dick.

Barba pointed at him, as if he knew Sonny wasn't really listening. "I will not be a string you can pull later," he said forcefully. "This means nothing."

Maybe to him it meant nothing.

 

The bottle cracked against the tabletop – that was the only thing that registered. Barba pulling his suspenders off, unbuttoning his pants and turning around, pushing them down – none of that really sank in.

Plaid boxer briefs, Sonny noted distantly, staring as Barba pushed them down, revealing his pale ass. Plaid. They almost matched his tie. Who matched their underwear to their necktie?

Barba, slightly bent forward so his hands rested flat against the table, gave him an impatient look over his shoulder. "Well? What's the fucking hold up, Detective?"

Sonny snapped to attention, immediately unclipping his holster and setting it on the table, scrambling to get his belt buckle undone while at the same time going for his wallet, intent on fishing out the condom he always kept on hand – never knew when you might get lucky, right? In a rush, trying to do too many things at once but he still couldn't quite believe his luck. Took seconds to stroke himself hard, roll the condom on and snatch the lube off the table, too busy slicking himself up to notice Barba's eyeroll.

This wasn't Sonny Carisi's first time at the rodeo, though. He'd done this kind of thing before. With a woman, admittedly, but the mechanics were mostly the same, so he thought he was doing the gentlemanly thing when he pushed slippery fingers between Barba's cheeks, one finger pressing firmly against his asshole. Waiting the whole time for Barba to shove him away, pull up his pants and say, "Just kidding!"

But that didn't happen.

"I didn't ask you for foreplay, Carisi," Barba hissed, glaring up at him at the same time Sonny screwed his finger into his ass. His mouth dropped open as Sonny twisted it slowly. "Fuck," he sighed, eyebrows rising as Sonny continued to work him open. Then: "Get your finger out of my ass and fuck me properly," Barba said, expression dangerous, and Sonny moved immediately to comply.

The sight of Barba holding himself open gave Sonny a bizarre, inverted sense of déjà vu. That was supposed to be _Sonny_ bent over the table, it was supposed to be _Sonny_ begging for dick, but if it was envy he was feeling it was blown away by the sound of Barba sucking in deep, unsteady breaths as Sonny pushed into him.

"Don't-" Barba reached back, grabbed blindly at Sonny's arm when he paused, thinking he'd wait for Barba to adjust, worried he was hurting him. "Don't you fucking dare stop again unless I tell you to."

If that's how he wanted it then fine. Sonny thrust in all the way, shifting in close behind Barba, both hands now on his solid hips, up under his shirt. His skin was soft and hot, but not as hot as he felt around Sonny's dick, and Sonny curved over him, pressed his forehead between Barba's shoulder blades as he tried to catch his breath, inhaling the expensive smell of him. Jesus Christ, he was _tight_. Sonny hadn't fucked anyone this tight since high school; even the one girl he'd tried anal with, Ilana, hadn't been like this. Of course, she'd insisted on about an hour of foreplay beforehand, but _still_ -

Barba shoved back against him, legs spreading further as he bent over the table, arms locked to bear his weight. "Get a fucking move on, Carisi," he whispered harshly.

Sonny didn't need to be told a fourth time; he rocked back on his heels, feet bracketing Barba's, and began to fuck him. Hard. The way he remembered him demanding in the video, facedown on the floor, and strangely it was the memory of Barba's hands, cuffed and tensing unconsciously, that spurred him on.

Where the hell were _his_ handcuffs? Probably still in his pants, down around his knees, out of reach and useless.

"Harder," Barba said suddenly, gasping after Sonny picked up the pace. "Harder," he said again, an edge of frustration creeping into his voice that Sonny recognized.

He said he could do a better job and God as his witness he would.

He kicked Barba's feet further apart, forced him to drop forward, hands sliding squeakily, barely missing knocking Sonny's holstered gun across the polished surface of the table. Sonny, feeling childishly irresponsible, spared a brief thought for gun safety before he proceeded to set a grueling pace he _knew_ Barba would approve of.

"Jesus fuck," Barba rasped, and his pleased laughter was low and wicked and short-lived before it was eaten up by a series of harsh gasps as Sonny thrust into him, rougher than he'd ever been with someone.

"Like that?" Sonny shook his hair out his eyes and pushed him down with a hand on his back, saw how streaks of sweat stained his dress shirt, and asked unthinkingly, "Does Daddy like that?"

Barba laughed again, eyes closed as Sonny shoved into him. "Yeah, you sick- Ah!" He dragged a hand along the table, intent on pushing himself up, but Sonny held him down, fucking into him forcefully enough to make the conference table creak and shift across the floor. " _Yeah_ ," he said, grinning like an asshole as he panted against the lacquered wood. "Daddy likes his boy's- Ah!"

There was no way Sonny was going to last for much longer if Barba talked like that, played along like that, and he wrapped his arm around his chest and dragged him up. Standing but barely, thighs pressing into the edge of the table, gasping raggedly as Sonny thrust into him slower, deeper.

"Yes," Barba gasped, swaying with the motion, arms limp at his sides as Sonny held him up. Lazy bastard. "Just like- Yes."

Arm secure around his heaving chest, fingers biting into his sweat-damp side, wrinkling his shirt, Sonny pushed his other hand between Barba's legs. Finally touching him the way he'd imagined for months and he didn't feel the least bit nervous as he rubbed down along his cock to grab his balls, listening to him groan as he fondled them. Being taller was _awesome._

"I told you," Sonny bit out, Barba's head lolling back against his shoulder. The sounds he was making, the way he grabbed at Sonny's arm, clenching around him as Sonny gave him a series of sharp jabs – everything was backwards, nothing was how he'd imagined it, but Christ on the cross it was good. And it all fed a profound self-satisfaction in Sonny. "Didn't I tell you?"

"Yeah, fine, shut up already." Barba made a strangled noise when Sonny wrapped his hand around his dick and jerked him dry.

There was no way Sonny was coming first; he'd never hear the end of it. Sonny started pumping Barba's dick in earnest, even as he kept fucking him. This pace was going to give one of them a heart attack in another minute but slowing down was not an option. "C'mon, admit it," he whispered into Barba's ear before he nipped at it, hoping he'd be too distracted to notice how Sonny's voice shook. "C'mon. I was right."

"Shit." Barba's eyes squeezed shut as he rocked into Sonny's hand, then back, needing more of his cock. "Always- Always looking to score points- _Fuck._ "

Sonny thumbed the head of his dick, shoving his hips hard against Barba's backside. "Say _you were right_."

"God, kiss my ass," Barba groaned, hand tight around Sonny's forearm as he held on, like it was the only thing keeping him on his feet. "Now is not- _Jesus_." He stiffened against Sonny, grunting as he jerked, fucked Sonny's fist arrhythmically as he came, spattering fluid over the table before them.

Sonny couldn't stop himself. Couldn't stop his hand from moving over Barba's dick, couldn't stop his hips from snapping as he drove into him, half-aware of Barba murmuring to him.

"That's it, Carisi, come on," he said, hand covering Sonny's where it still stroked his dick. "Come on already."

"Say it," Sonny said, ignoring how close he came to whining. "Say I was right."

But of course Barba wouldn't give him the satisfaction, choosing instead to drag his hand away from his cock, up the short distance to his mouth, and Sonny came as Barba licked his palm with broad swipes of his tongue.

Sonny dropped his forehead to his shoulder, locked knees and Barba's grip on his arm the only things keeping him upright. For long moments they stood there, Sonny leaning heavily into Barba, pressing him into the table.

Awareness flooded back the moment Barba elbowed him in the ribs. "Get off me."

Sonny staggered back, drawing out of him with a shared hiss, and stripped off the condom, looking for the wastebasket and trying to pull his pants up one-handed at the same time. The loose belt buckle flopping around was doing strange things to his normally reliable ability to dress himself.


	10. Barba/OMC, the one where Barba's a hooker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba/OMC, originally meant to end up Barba/Carisi but I never got that far.
> 
> Warning for: graphic violence, rape/noncon. I tagged for underage to be safe but the character in question is 16 at the time which _technically_ isn't underage, but... C'mon. The child abuse is lightly referenced but not shown. There's also a panic attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So once upon a time I said to Jenny, "Hooker AU?" "YES" And it just got out of hand from there. I tried something new with this and IDK if I liked it. Regardless, I have a 2500-word outline and I keep meaning to go back and finish it. I think this has the strongest chance out of everything of being finished. This is depressing as fuck, starts hard, and is not for the faint of heart.
> 
> Once more with feeling: check the additional tags. They're in chronological order.

Face-down on the floor and he knows they'd disagreed about something earlier – some quote by Gandhi, butchered as usual and Barba hadn't been able to keep his mouth shut so he'd dared to correct Ted Seibolt in public, in front of other people, and he knew better than to show up his clients but a man could only hear "be the change you want to see in the world" so many times before he cracked. So they'd disagreed, not exactly friendly but brief and he'd thought that had been it, but now he's face-down on the floor and he's having trouble figuring out how he got there.

Probably in the usual way, but-

Face-down on the tile floor, and tiles are typically cold to the touch – he'd never been a fan of tile, he liked carpet because it was usually warmer even if friction burn was a bitch – but right now they're warm because he thinks he's been lying there for a while. His hands are slipping against the smooth surface, trying uselessly to find something to hold onto to pull himself away from Seibolt, who's got him pinned down easily. Seibolt's bigger in every regard – he might be in his fifties but he's still a brick shithouse of a man who only sports vanity frames because he thinks people expect nerds to wear glasses and everyone knows the state comptroller is the biggest nerd in the land. Bigger, taller, heavier, and Seibolt had slapped him earlier. Barba's pretty sure that's what really started this: Seibolt slapping him when they got back to the room. Open-handed across the face, the way you'd slap a crying child or maybe your wife if it were the 1950s and she'd burnt the meat loaf.

Barba had spilled his drink, some of it landing on the tile floor, some on his shoe, and he'd blinked hard because he hadn't been remotely prepared for it. He isn't into rough trade, after all. He's better than that. He was _supposed_ to be better than that.

He gets his hands under him, meaning to push himself up, but then his face drags against the floor and there's a shock of pain radiating from his cheek that stuns him, makes him cry out, the result of something worse than just a slap. Seibolt fists the back of his shirt collar and chuckles, shoves harder into him, and there's the other pain Barba had been successfully ignoring.

There is, again, the impression that they've been there for a while. He has a vague recollection of Seibolt dragging his pants and underwear down without any assistance, forcing his cock into him, but there's a lot of unhelpful gaps in Barba's memory. His entire being hurts, he knows that much. And his legs might have gone to sleep.

Seibolt mutters something under his breath, thrusts losing some power, and then abruptly he tightens his grip on Barba's collar again and jerks him back just to smack his head against the floor, stunning him further. Childishly, Barba wonders what he did to deserve that, but the pain is a distraction from how Seibolt resumes fucking him with renewed energy, and Barba realizes all at once how much trouble he's in.

Because Seibolt hitting him in the face with the glass ashtray hadn't tipped him off. The reason for the frightening throb in his face, it's lying in plain sight on the floor by the coffee table; he can see it when he looks past the splatters and messy streaks of his blood on the tiles. Hard to tell how far away it is because his depth perception is a joke since only one of his eyes will open, but he remembers how it had felt connecting with his face and he starts to shake harder under Seibolt.

It gets abruptly more difficult to breathe, and at first he wonders if it's panic cutting off his air but it isn't, or isn't panic alone because Seibolt's hand slid from his collar to around his throat, squeezing. Seibolt, listening to all the involuntary noises of pain Barba's making, breathes in a series of hot gasps on the back of his neck as he fucks him with no small amount of difficulty – whatever slick wetness Barba can feel is not the result of any thoughtful preparation on Seibolt's part. That ashtray was all the foreplay Seibolt was interested in.

Seibolt's hand jerks, a sharp sudden clenching that chokes Barba properly, and he can see spots, a glitter of black and grey at the edges of his vision that spurs him to try getting up and away again even if it's futile. And with Seibolt's full weight on him it _is_ futile, all he can do is squirm and take it as Seibolt's hand tenses and he presses Barba down into the floor as he fucks him, his other hand bruising on his waist.

Barba's one working eyelid keeps sliding shut – probably the lack of oxygen to the brain is to blame. Lightheadedness, and the sense of panic growing distant. It's still there, but less imperative.

_Bambambam_

Seibolt goes rigid against him, stopping mid-thrust, and Barba wheezes.

"Shut up," Seibolt hisses into his ear, waiting.

The banging at the front door comes again, more insistent.

Seibolt leans back, pulls out and climbs off him, gets to his feet. "Stay there," he says, and walks away, presumably to answer the door down the hall. Hopefully he does up his pants first.

Barba, lying on the floor and enjoying the free oxygen, wonders where he'd go. Feeling is flooding back into his legs in the sharp stabbing of pins and needles, but the lightheadedness is slower to fade and it's leaving behind a woozy feeling he can't shake as he pushes himself up to his hands and knees, hooks one arm over the arm of the couch as he tries to fix his clothes. It hurts but making the effort seems important somehow, and he's kneeling because sitting seems out of the question at the moment. His suit jacket, he sees, is still draped over the back of the couch, but his phone had fallen forward out of the pocket to lie on the seat cushion. The red indicator light is flashing, reflecting off the metal of his pocketknife, lying folded next to it.

The door closes, and his guts clench at the sound of Seibolt stomping back alone. "Apparently you're a bit too noisy for some folks," Seibolt says, coming down the hall. "You'll have to keep it-" He trails off when he sees Barba on his knees up against the couch.

That panic that had grown distant comes roaring back; Barba's sixteen all over again, in Central Park and blinking in the pure white light of a cop's flashlight beam.

Seibolt doesn't say anything, doesn't even say the clichéd "I thought I told you to stay there," but he doesn't need to because he's already on Barba again, who's had enough. They're grappling against the couch, shoving the coffee table away and crooked across the floor, and Barba's relief at not being bashed against it disappears quickly when Seibolt, bigger and taller and in far better health and with far more energy, closes in behind him and easily gets him onto the couch. Tries to sit on him again, swearing at him in a whispered stream of aggravation, and it's round two. It just isn't fair, Barba thinks – no one rang the bell, no one said, "Touch gloves and come out swinging."

Round two and Barba isn't even recovered from round one, he didn't get to sit in a corner and have someone press a frozen silver dollar to the cuts on his face, and he's not doing this again. He refuses, but it doesn't matter; he can't tap out, can't risk a KO, not even when Seibolt punches him in the back of the head and he drops forward limply. Face-down _again_ , and he's never doing this again, this is it, he's taking early retirement. But he's traded tile for patent leather so now he can't see his own blood smear shiny and fresh on the couch as Seibolt jerks his pants back down. Barba fights to hold onto consciousness as Seibolt picks up where he left off, like the interruption was all he needed to finally shift into high gear.

Thorough in-and-out strokes now, like Seibolt's trying to hit something deep in Barba after hitting him everywhere else, and maybe if he keeps trying, moves a bit faster, works his hips a bit harder, maybe he'll manage it. It hurts like a motherfucker, and if Barba could speak he'd be swearing his own blue streak, but his mouth is too full of blood or maybe Seibolt's just got his face shoved too hard into the couch or maybe he just hurts too much. Pick one or the other or all of them – Barba can't even suck in enough air to moan, let alone yell, and he's still halfheartedly writhing against the couch, his phone digging hard into his hip, when Seibolt's hand pushes down on the back of his neck.

"You fucking faggot, I _told_ you not to move," Seibolt says, as if it's Barba's fault his strokes lost their rhythm, but Barba's figured out that it's his pain that's exciting Seibolt, that everytime he starts to lose steam he hurts him, and idly Barba wonders what the man's marriage is like, if all those rumors are really true. He bets they are.

Barba's fingers close around his pocketknife, wedged in the corner of the couch where the seat meets the back, and he waits for Seibolt to pull back before he gathers what energy he has and bucks, tries to shift him off, and Seibolt just rocks unsteadily, sits heavier down on his legs, and punches him hard in the side. Barba remembers being in a fight when he was younger, back in middle school, an angry little twelve-year-old fist striking him in the ribs. He remembers it hurt then, but it doesn't compare to how it feels now when Seibolt hits him again just to hear the noise he makes.

Barba gets his hands under him for the last time, the one a fist around his folded up knife, and he pushes himself up hard, and this time, _this time_ , he's successful. Seibolt tumbles off him, grabs at him as he falls off the couch, and they both end up back on the floor, wrestling on the tile like a couple of angry tomcats but _this time_ Barba's on top, and it's not remotely satisfying because he doesn't want to be anywhere near Seibolt, not for love and certainly not for money. There isn't enough money in the world anymore.

Seibolt, who has the longer reach, who does finally bash Barba against the edge of the coffee table, sending it screeching away across the tile, wraps both hands around Barba's neck. Barba's hand comes up and it's instinct that has him flicking his wrist to unfold the knife, and he's bring it down in an overhand arc when Seibolt sees it coming and grabs his arm, stopping him midswing.

There's a moment of stillness as Seibolt looks from the knife to his face, eyes disbelieving like Barba just did something uncivilized like cutting in line. Unlike when he first slapped Barba, there's no hint of anger in his face at all. Then the corners of his mouth curl up and the stillness is gone when Seibolt tightens his grip on his wrist and _twists_ , and Barba croaks a yell and drops the knife, hand gone numb and useless.

Smile widening, Seibolt's thumb digs into the side of Barba's windpipe. "Just like Sarah," he says out of the blue, and Barba gives up on stopping him from wringing his neck. Gives up on grabbing ineffectually at Seibolt's hand, trying to pry it away from his throat, and focuses instead on groping at the floor where he thinks the knife landed.

Barba isn't left-handed and his first couple of blows aren't very strong, especially since he's fighting to stay conscious the whole time. But he keeps going, vision tunneling, and Seibolt's hold weakens and Barba finds he can suck in nasty gulps of air that make his throat hurt more as he stabs him, over and over, the sound eerily similar to a kitchen blade punching into the side of a ripe cantaloupe, and finally Seibolt's hands fall away and Barba can stop and focus on breathing, hunched over and feeling old.

There's a ringing in his ears that won't go away, high-pitched like the whine of one of those mosquito ringtones that were popular with teens for two seconds years ago, and he thinks the ringing is why he doesn't hear the banging at the door at first.

Getting to his feet is a struggle; he makes the mistake of trying to balance himself against the couch with his bad hand – he has a bad hand now, great – and there's a screaming pain up his wrist, his arm, and he almost falls back down on Seibolt.

Who isn't in any position to care if he did, Barba notes dully.

"Open up or we're calling the police!" Whoever's at the door – management, in all likelihood – is getting upset, a man's shouts audible through the door and down the hall and into this torn up room that used to be a rather nice place for lounging and watching premium channels and drinking incredibly overpriced water.

Barba finally gets to his feet and sways, looking around disinterestedly, looking everywhere but at Seibolt, still sprawled before him with his dick out. Barba's pretty sure that's his blood smeared on the coffee table. He's still holding the knife; he has to press the dull side against his leg in order to get it folded using his left hand. He's clumsy and whistles when he breathes, and getting his clothes back where they belong is an exercise in frustration that brings tears to his eyes. Both eyes, the one stinging, but he manages in the end, slips the knife in his pocket before they can break down the door, and he staggers down the long hall, dragging his hand over the wall for balance. It didn't seem like such a huge distance when Seibolt walked it earlier. He fumbles the lock open, hand sliding bloody against the doorknob.

Hotel management after all, a tall streak of bleached blond wearing a skinny black tie, and when he takes a step back in disgust Barba self-consciously wipes a finger over his eyebrow, feeling dirty, a trickle of what he hopes is sweat rolling down his temple. Judging by how Blondie tracks the movement with an open-mouthed expression of horror, it isn't sweat at all.

"Holy shit," says the beefier guy standing behind Blondie, wearing the dark gray uniform of a rent-a-cop; Barba hadn't seen him until he shifted into view.

"You probably _should_ call the police," Barba says very carefully, quietly, like it's possible for him to find exactly the right set of movements that would prevent his face or throat from hurting while still managing communication. He turns away, leaving the door open, and wanders stiffly back into the room, remembering how Seibolt had a pack of Camels on him and that he really wants one while he waits for the cops.

"Holy fucking shit," someone says behind him, and then maybe that same someone grabs his arm before he can start fishing around in Seibolt's pockets and Barba lurches away and almost goes down, tripping over his own feet in his haste to get free. It's the rent-a-cop, and it's his grip that keeps Barba from falling on Seibolt's prone body. "C'mon, come out here," he's saying, and Barba can't be bothered to push him away again. He's tired of pushing strangers away, it's not like they ever listen.

"I just wanted a smoke," he says instead, tongue feeling thick in his mouth; they'd both followed him back into the room, and Blondie's on a cellphone sounding hysterical about something as the guard leads Barba back out into the hallway to lean lopsidedly against the wall.

The guard pulls out a pack from his back pocket and shakes out a slightly crumpled cigarette for Barba, lights it with a blue Bic. "You really fucked him up, huh?" The guy sounds impressed, watching him smoke, and Barba flicks ash onto the carpet. The ashtray is back in the room and it's probably for the best he not use it, but at least the taste of smoke is a nice change from the blood, even if it isn't helping his stomach in the least.

His head, on the other hand, has started to feel a little better, the pain receding beneath the rush of nicotine, and he presses the heel of his palm to his pounding forehead, mindful of the lit cigarette between his fingers.

"The police are on their way," Blondie says, coming out of the room and inching around Barba, back to the wall like he might lunge for him, putting the guard between them.

"You told them to send an ambulance too, right?" The guard asks in an undertone, barely audible because the ringing in Barba's ears is so loud again, louder than it was before, and the half stub of cigarette slips from between his fingers.

"Hey, what the fuck!" Blondie's not having a very good day, Barba thinks, and he has to tilt his head to look down at the cigarette burning a hole in the carpet running the length of the hallway. It dropped to his left, his bad side – does he even _have_ a good side anymore? His vision blurs and he thinks maybe no, he doesn't, just before his knees give out and back down to the floor he goes. At least it's not tile again.

 

It's freezing out but he isn't exactly dressed for the weather so all he can do is pull his hands up the sleeves of his thin denim jacket, fisting the material so the wind doesn't blow in. It makes him look like a double amputee – look, Ma, no hands – and he almost laughs at the idea but he glances up at the guy he's following deeper into the park and he doesn't laugh.

They'd been walking for at least five minutes, further and further in where the lighting was poorer, the stars more visible through the skeletal branches of the bare trees, and Rafael wasn't too stupid to not have a bad feeling about this, but he'd had a bad feeling about all of it, about the entire day, ever since he woke up that morning and heard his dad coughing and groaning in the bathroom. So he ignores it, looks up at the stars because he so rarely sees them, not really paying attention to whereever they're going until he trips over a tree root and almost plows into the guy, who's finally stopped. Guess they've reached their destination.

It's just dark, like the rest of the park, nothing special about it that Rafael can see besides that it's pretty far off the path, but the underbrush isn't very thick. A little clearing, private and he thinks that maybe if this were a book, maybe something by Dumas, then it would be a good place for an illegal duel. Enough space for that kind of action, a minor swordfight or pistols at dawn.

The guy – he never got his name, didn't seem to be any point, but he looks kind of like his calculus teacher which is pretty weird and now that he's seen it he can't _un_ see it, starts thinking of him as Mr. Matthews – turns to him and in the dark he tips his head like he's expecting Rafael to say something nice about their surroundings, like he invited him into his place and it's the polite thing to do.

He huddles in his jacket, sleeve stumps tucked into his armpits, and says instead, "So, you want to do it here?" It comes out disbelieving and he feels stupid, like duh, that's why they're there. They didn't come out here to stargaze.

He doesn't like how the guy looks at him, it makes his skin crawl, but maybe that's the early winter cold, and he rocks back and forth on his feet, trying to stay warm, wishing he'd worn his boots instead of his running shoes even if they didn't fit as well.

"I'll give you double if you let me fuck you," Mr. Matthews says, and Rafael stops fidgeting.

"That's not what we agreed on," he says, sounding petulant, but he doesn't consider it even if double would mean going home earlier, maybe getting something to eat on the way since he already has sixty dollars stuffed in his shoe, and another forty would be a nice even hundred, and surely he could spare a buck for a cup of coffee or something without feeling _too_ bad about it. Wasn't like he was keeping the rest of it anyway.

He's considering it, and the guy knows he is because he doesn't say anything, just waits him out with an air of hopefulness, and Rafael shakes his head and stands up straight, trying to make himself look taller and pushing his hands out from his sleeves to rub them together. "No, we had a deal," he says. "Twenty for a blowjob," and he's still not sure about his pricing but the girls said it was fine, that he could charge pretty much anything since he looked so young. Kelly called him a hot commodity, which was kind of gross and weird.

"Alright, alright, calm down," Mr. Matthews says, and the resemblance is actually pretty strong, the way he waves his hands like he's trying to get the class to shut up. "Just asking." He sounds kind of disappointed, but not pissed or anything.

Rafael looks around the clearing, but it's still just them, and he can't feel his toes so they might as well get this over with. "Money first."

"Half now, half after," Mr. Matthews rebutts, like they're dickering over way more than twenty bucks, and pulls out his wallet from his coat pocket, holding a ten out between his fingers like he was passing his business card.

Rafael grabs it, stuffs it in his back pocket, waits awkwardly for the guy to open his coat before he drops to his knees, and shit, it's even colder than he thought. The leaves crunch under his knees, tendrils of freezing traveling up from the earth through his legs, and that's the only reason his hands are shaking as he opens the guy's pants and gets his dick out.

He figured out pretty quickly all on his own that these guys aren't looking for high art when it comes to getting blown, which is good because Rafael's no artist. But for some of them, the ones who look normal, like dads, science teachers, they seem to get off quicker the worse he is at it, so with Mr. Matthews he doesn't try honing his technique or anything. Doesn't bother using his hands at all because the guy's already hard, so he just starts licking and sucking like he wants it so bad he can't help himself, enthusiastic when really he wants to be done as quickly as possible because he's fucking freezing.

Mr. Matthews drops his hand on Rafael's head, fingers threading through his hair, and he's never liked that but he's not in a position to do anything about it so he just tries to ignore it, focuses on watching his teeth.

"That's it, such a good boy," Mr. Matthews says, smoothing his hair back, petting him like he's a dog. "Such a good boy, yeah, you know how to make Daddy happy, don't you?" And it's dark so Rafael doesn't stop himself from rolling his eyes. _So_ pathetic, but then again he's the one on his knees so maybe he shouldn't be throwing stones.

Then the hand on his head gets a little heavier, grip tightening in his hair, and the guy starts to thrust his hips more, surprising Rafael into trying to lean back. Not that he can, so he switches tactics, tries pushing the guy away with his hands on his thighs, at his waist, but none of it's working and he's starting to choke as the guy fucks his mouth.

"Yeah, take it, that's right," Mr. Matthews says as he thrusts into his mouth, holding his head in place with both hands. "You little cocksucker, you should have let me fuck you," and he sounds angry, like this is Rafael's fault, his bad judgment to blame for landing them in this mess, and his eyes water as the guy who looks like his math teacher yanks his hair and comes in his mouth with a groan.

Rafael thinks about the ten bucks he has, the ten bucks he's owed, and is too full of the spirit of _fuck you_ to do anything but give the guy a little bite just before he pulls out of his mouth. He gets backhanded for his trouble but he's used to that and, besides, it's worth it to watch Mr. Matthews cradle his dick and swear at him as Rafael spits come out on the dead leaves and wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

"You bastard," Mr. Matthews says, and hits him again, which Rafael should have expected, and he tumbles over onto his side, hot pain blossoming through his face, and the guy's bending over him when suddenly there's a shout and a shaky beam of light plays over them.

"Hey! The fuck are you doing over there!" Another shout, a stern male voice, and Matthews looks up into the light, squinting, before he turns tail and runs deeper into the park, disappearing into the dark, and Rafael thinks about him running along through the trees with his dick still out and he laughs before he rubs his jaw.

"What's going on?" The voice is closer than before, and he can hear someone walking carefully towards him. He gets up, legs stiff and aching with cold, brushes the leaves off his ass and turns, blinking in the white light, waiting for his eyes to adjust as he thinks up a lie, figuring it's just a park ranger or something.

The flashlight beam never drops from his face, and when his eyes adjust he sees it's a cop holding it. Tall, taller than Mr. Matthews, in a warm-looking winter jacket, the gloved hand not holding the flashlight resting on his holstered gun, and Rafael swallows, far more nervous than he ever was when he first walked into the park.

 

Barba doesn't have enough working hands for all the icebags he needs to be holding, so he alternates between his face and his head, a steady back and forth, and his arm is tired but that's the least of his hurts so he can shove it aside pretty easily.

A fresh set of cops shows up right after he moves the bag from forehead to cheek; there's three of them talking to his doctor and one of the nurses for the length of time it takes him to make two passes, back and forth, chasing a numbness that never lasts long enough. The nurse in the hall, the short one with a round smiling face that reminds him of his mom despite the utter lack of resemblance, had given him a paper cup with two Tylenol in it earlier, after he woke up.

"Because of your head," she'd explained when he'd looked down at them, feeling robbed somehow, thinking he deserves far more than he's gotten. She'd reached out and touched his hair very gently, over the back of his head where Seibolt had punched him, and maybe she was just checking for damage but he'd hiccuped a sob anyhow, dry-swallowed the pills before he got any more worked up.

He's still waiting for the drugs to kick in when the first cop files into the room. She's tall, very put-together in a way that makes his self-consciousness spike, and she leans towards him after she sits down on the wheeled chair the doctor had dragged over to his bedside, on his good side.

"Hello, Mr. Barba," she says, gaze flicking over him, and he tries very hard to pretend he isn't a total disaster at the moment because she's very attractive and he, like every other human being on the planet, has a strong desire to be liked. Lying propped up in a hospital bed, looking the way he does: this is is not the way to make a good first impression. He wants to assure her that he doesn't normally go around like this, that he'd change if they'd let him, but she doesn't say anything about the state of his clothes or his face, just gives him a small smile that doesn't distract from her serious eyes. "I'm Sergeant Olivia Benson with Manhattan's Special Victims Unit. Doctor Khan said you can talk – could you tell me what happened?"

He shifts the ice to his head, thinks about giving this nice-looking woman all the sordid details, weighing it alongside his hard-earned aversion to cops. She wouldn't be the first person he's explained things to; he's got it down to an art now, a study in brevity. But her hands are empty – she doesn't have a notepad or anything else ready – and her two colleagues are still out in the hall, one of them taking notes as Khan talks, and he just knows he's going to have to tell what happened all over again once Benson's done with him. Over and over until they're _all_ done with him, whether he likes it or not. That's how it is with cops, they push until they're satisfied, cover it with bullshit about the system or the process or whatever and fuck you very much.

Easiest just to go along with it, draw as little attention as possible, keep the lying to a minimum. Not that he's bothered with that last this time around, there's just no point. No amount of lying could get him out of Seibolt's hotel room and he knows it, so he sighs and tells her what happened in a voice slightly louder than a whisper. His face is finally numb and it makes talking a very strange exercise, and he tries to think about that novelty instead of how Benson's expression starts to change as he talks, but not very much. No abject horror or gasps of surprise or disgust, just a little wrinkle between her eyebrows as she looks very sympathetic and very, very serious.

But then again she _is_ a sergeant in Special Victims, whatever that is, so she's probably heard a lot of this kind of thing, and when he's done she says very sincerely, "I'm sorry that happened to you." She sounds like she means it, and she probably does, but Barba's said a lot of things people thought he meant so he knows just how good a person can get at false sympathy. Still, it's nice that she didn't try to pad it out. He can appreciate that.

Barba moves the bag back to his cheek for a moment, waiting for the pain he'd stirred up with his recitation to die back down to a more manageable level – fuck Seibolt for concussing him and guaranteeing he'd never get anything stronger than fucking Tylenol. It's not going to get any better any time soon though, and he shifts uncomfortably on the bed, careful of his arm, and asks the only question that matters: "Are you going to arrest me?"

Benson's hesitation is miniscule before she says, "Not at this time." Which they both know is code for _not yet_. "But, if you're up to it, I _would_ like to have one of my detectives take some pictures of your injuries-" He's shaking his head, pulse quickening at the thought of there being a permanent record of his condition, and she sees him starting to panic because her voice takes on a sing-song quality that's probably supposed to be soothing. "It would be to your benefit later on, having proof in case the state does decide to press charges," she says, and he hates that she's right because he doesn't want to do this, do any of this, and the idea of being left alone with a cop who's meant to catalog all his mistakes makes him feel physically ill in a way that swallowing so much of his own blood hasn't managed yet.

Ultimately it's not like he has a choice, no matter that she phrases it as a request. Cops don't make requests.

 

"What's going on?" The cop asks again, scanning the clearing as if he's expecting to see more people hiding under the leaves.

Rafael remembers everything his parents told him about interacting with cops: be polite, be respectful, don't lie, don't cause trouble, do what they say, and for God's sake, Rafa, don't get smart. It's dark and late and he's got no choice, he has to lie.

"I-I was on my way home, and that guy- He said he had a knife, and if I didn't…" His voice dies as the cop shines the light on his face again, and he trails off, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare and he can't see the cop's face at all, can't tell if he bought any of it.

The silence stretches on and he knows he didn't. He's not very good at lying, has never been really, and he does most of it through omission nowadays, mostly through shrugs when his parents ask him where he's been, what he's been up to. "Around," he always says, and that's always enough.

"How old are you?" The flashlight beam drops from his face for a second, travels down his body as he tries to decide what number will net him the least amount of grief. Eighteen's out of the question because it's totally unbelievable, he knows how young he looks, not to mention eighteen would make him an adult and chargeable, but anything younger makes him a minor and the cop could take him in and call his parents.

Apparently he's been too slow in his thinking because the cop has drawn his own conclusions.

"That's what I thought," he says, and the light is back in his face as the cop grabs his face roughly, turns his head from side to side, examining him. Probably looking at his mouth. "You trickin'? Is that it?"

"No!" Rafael tries to shake him off, push his hand away, but it's like pushing at a wall, and his brain feels like an egg being scrambled when the cop shakes him, gloved hand easily covering his face sickeningly familiar.

"What did he pay you, five bucks? You're just a baby," the cop laughs, letting him go so he stumbles back. "Ten? Fifteen?"

Rafael doesn't say anything, pulling his hands back into his sleeves, cheeks burning hot like he was backhanded again as the cop keeps guessing.

"There's no way he paid you anymore than thirty, jailbait's never that smart-"

"He was supposed to pay me twenty," he finally admits in a mumble, upset by the unfairness of it, leaving out that he's got half in his back pocket, and he can't feel his toes when he tries to wriggle them in his shoes as the cop laughs at him again, even more scornfully than before.

"'Supposed to'? There's your first lesson, kid: always get the money up front." That gloved hand shoots out of the darkness again, touselling his hair in a parody of familiarity, jostling him, and he's sick of it, he's sick of people touching his hair, and at the soonest opportunity he's getting it cut.

"Yeah, thanks for the tip," he says, ducking out from under the hand, and that was a mistake because the cop stops laughing and the beam of light drops. He can feel something cold and solid nudge up under his chin, and he remembers the cop walking into the clearing with his hand on his gun, hopes it's just the flashlight.

"Second lesson: don't backtalk," the cop says, forcing his head back, and his eyes have to adjust to the dark all over again because he can't see anything even though the cop feels closer than before, looming over him, clouds of hot breath drifting down against his head as the cop breathes hard through his nose like an annoyed horse. "It's bad for business, you understand?"

He doesn't want to risk nodding, but the cop seems satisfied by whatever he sees in his face because he lowers the flashlight and Rafael can breathe easier until he says, "Twenty bucks for… What, a blowjob? Jeez, the things people will do," and it sounds casual except for how Rafael knows it isn't, and he can make out the shape of the cop in the darkness now, clicking the flashlight off, and he knows what that means.

He licks his lips. "I'll- Ten," he says, voice sounding reedy, and he shivers when the wind cuts through the clearing all of a sudden. "If you want-"

"Want what, some perv's sloppy seconds? No thanks," the cop says, cutting his legs out from under him, and Rafael can't believe he even offered, what the fuck was he thinking? It's too cold to think, and he's shivering full-force when the cop asks, "You let anyone fuck you yet?"

"N- _no_ ," he says, stuttering from nerves or the chill or both, probably both, because a big hand touches the front of his jacket, over his empty belly, and smooths down to cover the crotch of his jeans and squeeze, and he's frozen in place, knees locked.

"Don't get excited, kid, I don't screw with jailbait," the cop says.

Rafael badly wants to ask him what the fuck he's doing then when he keeps groping him, stopping only to tug at the button and fly of his jeans, but he's hyperaware of the holstered gun and stays quiet.

"You let anyone jerk you off?" When Rafael shakes his head, a jerky movement, the cop sounds surprised, even a little dismayed. "What, not even girls? When I was your age, all I did was mess around with girls any chance I got." The leather glove is icy against his skin as it pulls his soft dick out of the front of his briefs, and Rafael hisses, tries to step back, but the hand closes dangerously around him and he freezes.

"Doesn't seem right, someone your age – you're what, fifteen?" The cop gives his dick a tug, and it hurts. It's cold and it hurts and he doesn't want this, doesn't want some stranger touching him, but the cop keeps going anyway. "Just doesn't seem right," he repeats, gloved hand moving, and it might be Rafael's imagination but it feels like the leather is starting to warm, and even if it's dry it's still smooth, supple.

He bites his lip and closes his eyes, resigning himself to this happening, his first handjob, and it's nothing like what he'd hoped for. No Lauren Sullivan in sight, for starters; he'd always thought of her before when he was alone, but his head is empty now and the cop's grip is painfully tight and he whimpers.

"That's it, let 'em hear it," the cop says, approving. "No one likes a quiet whore, you _want_ people to think you like it, they'll tip you better then," and he jerks the end of Rafael's dick, hard and fast and he gasps.

"Oh," he says, very quietly, shy, used to trying to be silent at home so he won't get caught touching himself in his room with the door that can't stay closed because it doesn't sit in the frame properly. Warped, just like he is, apparently, because he can't help saying it again: "Oh. Oh."

"That's it, baby, c'mon," the cop murmurs, tugging him fast between two thick fingers, leather-covered thumb rubbing the head. "Christ, you're sweet. Gimme that sweet little cherry, give it up."

Rafael doesn't recognize the sound of his own voice when he whines, "Oh, _oh_ ," and he doesn't know what to say before his balls tighten and he pulses into the cop's palm, swaying with the force of it. He opens his eyes after, panting, watches his breath float up above him towards the cold white stars in the distance.

The cop lets him go and he thinks with relief they're done, he has to be done. Quickly tucks his soft dick back in his briefs where it'll be safe, raw fingers clumsy on his zipper, and he can't seem to get the button done up so he doesn't bother, just tugs his shirt and jacket back down, and then the cop grabs him and his heart sinks because no, he's not done.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you to clean up after yourself?"

"What?" How his voice manages to crack on one word when he can manage entire sentences just fine he'll never understand, but it does.

The cop holds out his gloved hand, the one he touched him with, and in the darkness it's shiny, wet, and Rafael gulps, looking at it.

"You got your come all over my new glove." The cop's grip tightens on his shoulder, through the thin shell of jacket, and holds him in place as he lifts his messy hand level with Rafael's face. "Clean it up."

He looks from the glove up to the cop's face, seeing just a glitter of his eyes in the dark, but his meaning is obvious and Rafael's stomach turns over. But then, hadn't he just had some stranger's come in his mouth not too long ago? This isn't any different. Probably better, really, since he knows where it came from.

He leans forward and starts to lick the cop's glove clean with small, unsure swipes of his tongue, but then he gets more determined, more resigned, and before he knows it he's lapping it up like a hungry dog, one hand tentative at the cop's wrist to tilt his hand so he can lick between his fingers, around the round swell of his thumb, over the broad valley of his palm. Getting used to the gooey, salty taste, already cold, and the leather beneath, how it drags against his tongue, and he doesn't stop until the cop pulls his hand away, wipes it dry on the front of Rafael's jacket.

"Good enough," he says. "Come on with me, now," and Rafael sighs, shoulders sagging because he's tired, he doesn't want anymore, doesn't want to _do_ anymore, just wants to go home and brush his teeth for an hour and never do any of this again. "Can't very well leave you out here alone," the cop continues, pulling him by the shoulder and turning his flashlight back on and aiming it at the ground before them. "Kid your age, anything could happen to you."

Rafael, shaking, shoves his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, walking fast as he dares back through the park, but he can't get away from the cop's hand on his back, between his shoulder blades.

They reach the concrete path quick enough, and another cop is standing there, under a light, stomping his feet and scowling. "The fuck, man? I thought you fell in a hole or something. Thought I was going to have to go in after you."

"Like you could be bothered," says the cop behind Rafael, sounding jovial enough, and he doesn't turn around, doesn't satiate curiosity he doesn't feel about the cop's appearance. He doesn't want to know what he looks like, wants to know as little as possible about him. Bad enough he knows his voice, his height. His grip.

The new cop looks kind of like his dad, wearing a dark hat with enormous earflaps that looks extremely warm and Rafael is immediately jealous. "Who's this?" He points vaguely at Rafael; he's wearing gloves as well. Everyone has gloves but him, it seems.

The cop loops an arm around his shoulders and gives him a friendly shake. "Jack here got a bit lost. Told him we'd help him find his way out."

His partner looks at him, one eyebrow quirked, and Rafael, hunching in on himself, looks away, down at his shoes, at the path disappearing into the distance in a hard curve around some trees. No point now in making a run for it.

"You and your sharp ears," the new cop finally says, grudgingly impressed, and starts walking, leading the way at a trudge.

"Got enough tokens for the subway?" the cop asks him, and Rafael wants to ignore him, was hoping they'd just leave him on the path and trust him to find his own way out, but nothing else has gone his way tonight so why should this? They're not even walking him to the right side of the park.

He shrugs, sullen.

"Here." A gloved hand darts into view before him, holding out a folded twenty dollar bill, and the new cop looks back and groans loudly.

"Don't give him any money, Puchalski," he says. "I told you, you're not supposed to give them money, they're like seagulls, don't _feed_ them or they'll keep coming back-"

"Shut up, Bryant," the cop – Puchalski – says, waving the twenty at Rafael, and he takes it, crushes it up in his fist. Now he knows his name. Something else he didn't want, given to him.

"Thanks," he whispers.

"Don't mention it."

They reach the edge of the park – not soon enough – and Rafael stands at the nearest intersection, waiting for the light, not daring to jaywalk even if it would get him away from them sooner, and crossing is going to put him even further away from where he needs to be but he doesn't care. He doesn't turn back until he's safely across the street, plunging into the city, and when he does he can't see them, just sees the dark solidity of the park rising up beyond the nighttime flow of traffic.

 

"Can you turn your head a- Yes, great."

The sound of the camera shutter is loud, a _snapsnap_ that Barba has yet to get used to. They've been at it for… He doesn't know how long. He's lost track of time, so focused on just staying on his feet, body thrumming with a million hurts, mindlessly following the detective's instructions. Stand up, face forward, turn left, turn right, tilt your head, raise your arms. He's waiting for her to tell him to put his right toe in, take his right toe out, and he thinks about saying as much but she might not appreciate the joke.

Detective Amanda Rollins, as she introduced herself with a small smile, lowers her camera and bites the corner of her lip so quickly he almost doesn't notice, wouldn't if he hadn't been staring at her the whole time, feeling like he has to keep an eye on her. She's small though, not much of a threat except what must be inherent to her nature, being a cop.

"Doctor Khan said you have some other bruising? Would you…" She trails off because he knows where this is going, and he's already trying to unbutton his shirt but it's hard with one hand, harder when that one hand won't stop shaking, and he huffs, annoyed.

"I can't- I can't get the buttons," he says, feeling heat prickling at his eyes, and there's a squeak of wheels to his left that makes his heart jump into his throat. He'd forgotten they'd let him keep the nurse, how she'd taken the stool by the door and stayed quietly out of the way, but she comes forward now out of the darkness of his periphery. "I can't get my shirt off," he says to her, ashamed that he can't manage this one simple thing on his own. He's an adult, he put his shirt on that morning just fine without any help at all.

"Do you want me to do it?" She's shorter than he initially thought, now that she's standing before him, and he nods, looks down and watches her pull on a pair of latex gloves from her pocket with practiced movements. When her fingers move down the row of buttons, it's with that same efficiency, and he looks past them to her shoes, white and pastel pink Nikes.

When she's done she steps back, waiting, and Barba pushes at his sleeve, doing his best to guide the material down his useless arm with minimal contact, and he must have lost a cufflink because the cuff, loose, glides easily over his hand. One sleeve down, his shirt half off, and he feels exhausted but that isn't the only reason he can't get his shirt off entirely by himself so he looks to – he doesn't even know her name. The nurse. She steps forward again, pulls his shirt down his other arm, and it catches – still one cufflink for her to fiddle with – before snagging again on his plastic hospital bracelet, but it's off at least.

Barba shivers, bare arms breaking out in goosebumps in the cold air of the hospital room, and he's still wearing an undershirt and that has to come off too of course, so he grips the hem, determined to try this by himself – pointless though it is, he knows before he begins that there's no way he'll be getting this shirt off in anything approaching the usual way. But he's had enough of asking for assistance for the moment, takes a breath and makes the fatal mistake of looking down.

Because there's red all over it, blotches and splatters, the staining heaviest towards the bottom of his shirt and leading up in arcs across his chest, and Barba pulls a handful of the material out so it's taut, so he can better look at it, uncomprehending when it peels away from his body. Thinking how strongly it resembles nothing so much as the drip paintings he saw at the MoMA a couple of months ago, but those were black and white, and this is red, all shades of red, most of it a nice strawberry, but up around the collar it's dark. Like cherries.

"Mr. Barba? Mr. Barba, I need you to take a breath for me."

His heart's pounding so hard he can see it in his chest, under thin, stained cotton. Pounding, pounding, pumping blood throughout his body, and that's what it is all over him, all over his clothes, all over his skin, and he starts to shake, feeling it between his legs, looking at it on his hand, dark under his ragged fingernails, in the wrinkles of his knuckles, but pale pink in the grooves of his palm, most of it washed away by the condensation of the icebag. The closest he's gotten to cleaning himself up, to being _allowed_ to clean up, and he doesn't know how anyone can stand to be in the same room with him because the smell of it-

Him. Ted Seibolt, slathered and dried over his entire body, and the _smell_. A flat, metallic smell, unmistakeable, and Barba doesn't know how he went so long without noticing, _really_ noticing. Remembers how the men at the hotel reacted, how Sergeant Benson looked at him, how the nurse wouldn't touch him without a latex barrier between them, and he looks at his dress shirt. It's folded up in a clear plastic bag sitting on a rolling tray behind the nurse, the streaks of red visibly more defined than what's on his undershirt, and she's saying something but it's just noise he doesn't understand.

His shirt is in an evidence bag and he'll never get it back and he wouldn't want it anyway because it isn't salvageable, no drycleaner could ever get it white again, and they'll take everything he's wearing as soon as he'll let them because it's all evidence. If only they'd take his skin too, he thinks, maybe just the top three or four layers, just whatever the blood's touched. He'll have to scrub it off anyway; he probably isn't salvageable either.

Barba's swaying like a tree in a windstorm and he doesn't realize it until someone tries to steady him, a touch to his upper arm that has him lurching back, banging up against the bed, setting a thousand aches in his body to screeching pains, and even as his brain is yelling at him to run a smaller part of it is disgusted with him because this frightened child isn't who he is.

Detective Rollins draws her hand back, palms up and open, and she wasn't even on his bad side, he doesn't have any excuse for not noticing her approaching, he just lost track of her and he knows better than that with cops. Needs to keep an eye on her but she obviously feels the same about him and he can't stand being looked at but there's nowhere for him to go so he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to get a grip before he makes anymore of a spectacle of himself.

"That's it, deep breaths, slow and easy," he hears the nurse say, and he tries to do what she says, feels himself take one shaky breath after another, always on the knife-edge of a sob, until he feels a little less crazy than he did a minute ago. This is not the way to behave, Barba thinks harshly. This is not helpful. This will not help.

It takes another minute of controlled breathing before he feels a fragile semblance of control return, and he's trying to resolve himself to finishing what they'd started when Detective Rollins, camera set aside and photography session seemingly forgotten, asks him in a hesitant, sympathetic tone of voice just made sweeter by her faint southern accent, "Is there somebody I could call for you? Family, maybe a friend? To come be here with you?"

He looks at her, imagining her saying this to a hundred, a thousand other people, in exactly that same tone of voice. Wonders how many said _yes, call my wife, call my husband, call my mom or dad, boyfriend, roommate. Call my boss, tell him I'm going to be late so I won't get fired, I can't lose my job, I was late last week_. Wonders how many people answered the same way he does, how many hated her the same way he does now when she makes him say, "No, there isn't."

It's worse than having her touch him.

 

It's late, far past curfew by the time Rafael lets himself into the apartment as quietly as he can. It's dark, and he steps lightly, avoiding the creaky spots in the floor, and is halfway down the hall when he sees a light coming from the kitchen and gives up.

His father is sitting at the table, rubbing his chest slowly under his striped robe as he reads a battered-looking paperback. Rafael's copy of _Oliver Twist_ , borrowed from the school library for an English assignment. He looks at Rafael over the pages, mouth twisting, but doesn't say anything as Rafael files into the room, nervous, though he doesn't seem up to expressing his displeasure in the usual way. Waits instead for Rafael to join him at the table with a glass of milk before he says anything.

"Your mother is worried," he says, pointedly continuing his reading. Using his words instead of his hands or a belt to show his displeasure, but then he hasn't been in the best of health lately.

Rafael says nothing. Normally he'd try to talk his way out of trouble, pointless though it always proves, but it's beyond him at the moment. He can't think up anything clever enough, fantastic enough, to cover how he spent his night; better not to say anything. Pretend it didn't happen, even if he's got sixty dollars in his shoe and another thirty in his back pocket that won't let him forget. So instead he sips his milk and watches his father's eyes, fixed on a spot on the page.

Finally his father gives up on pretending and closes the book, sets it down on the table to fold his big hands over it and look at him. "You're not even going to bother trying to lie, are you?"

Rafael shrugs one shoulder and looks away, not meaning to be sulky but falling into it anyway. He's tired, and he's cold, and he knows that if he sits here too long his father will be able to tell what exactly he's gotten up to and punish him appropriately. It feels obvious. He needs a shower.

His father is frowning, scrutinizing him, and it isn't until he touches Rafael's face, forcibly turning him by the chin so he can't flinch away, that Rafael can figure out what's caught his eye. "What happened? Did somebody hit you?" Only cares when it's someone else doing it.

Rafael risks jerking back out of his grasp, surprised he manages it but resisting the urge to rub his cheek where that guy – the fake Mr. Matthews – struck him. It'll just draw more attention to it. "Nothing," he says. "It was an accident. Just some older kids screw- messing around with me. That's all." It's dangerously close to the truth, and it's happened before, and it should be utterly believable.

"You still let them?" His father grabs his chin again, roughly twists his face from side to side, the way the cop did in the park. "A real man-"

"Yeah, yeah," he says. Pulling away again is a mistake, just like interrupting is a mistake, but he can't endure another lecture on what a _real man_ would or wouldn't do. Nothing he did tonight is something a real man would do, but he's pretty sure a _real man_ wouldn't casually swat his kid the way his father does. Rafael scoots his chair back before his father can slap him a second time, face throbbing anew as he drains his glass of milk before rinsing it out, setting it upside down in the sink as his father rises with a creaky cough from his seat.

 

"Answering the door seemed like the polite thing to do," Barba responds.

Detective Carisi doesn't write that down. He's done a lot of writing over the last hour, all in very dense, compact printing that Barba finds impossible to decipher, especially when it's upside-down and he's got one good eye. But he hasn't asked as many questions as Barba expected; he shouldn't be surprised, it's not like Barba was reluctant to tell him what happened. Not anymore, not now that he's at the end of the line. He's too damn tired to give a fuck about anything, just wants to get this over with so he can move on to the next thing. X-rays, he assumes, or maybe blood work, or another incredibly invasive but horribly necessary physical examination like what he's already been through.

The detective is looking at him expectantly, like he asked him a question, and Barba thinks he might have nodded off sitting up. He's still damp from the shower he insisted on after Rollins was done with him, horribly impractical though it was. The water was barely warm, the soap is drying his skin out, and one of the nurses – not _his_ nurse, and he really has to find out her name at some point, it's ridiculous that he doesn't know it – had to sponge bathe his good arm for obvious reasons, but it was worth it to stand in the glorified closet and watch the blood swirl down the drain. Worth it to get ten minutes alone, to slump against the wall and not be stared at the way this cop is doing now. Professional cool over personal disgust, and it hurts more coming from Carisi because Barba remembers the last time they met, and there was very little that was cool between them, and no disgust whatsoever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original title, Got The Money If You Got The Time, is from "Lover I Don't Have To Love" by Bright Eyes which I listened to approximately a million times while writing this. ONLY CONOR OBERST UNDERSTANDS MY FEELS.


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